... that The Beatles arrived in Melbourne (my home town) on their 1964 world tour. Australia had never seen anything like it before, and probably not since.
The story of how an Australian concert promoter managed the astonishing coup of securing the band for dates in Australia is here:
http://www.news.com.au/entertainment...-1226929182904
At the time he was in Britain and booked them, they were "a rising rock band with a handful of hits under their belts". By the time they arrived here a year later, they were the biggest thing on the planet. In short, he got a bargain. When the guys landed in Sydney, George Harrison quipped "You got us at the old price, didn’t you?".
Adelaide was initially not on the tour schedule, but a petition to bring them to Adelaide attracted 80,000 signatures which was sufficient to persuade the promoter. In response, 300,000 people turned out to meet them - according to some sources, the largest Beatles crowd EVER.
To put that in perspective, the total population of Adelaide at that time was about 600,000.
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