Lot's of articles this week celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Beatles' only Austrailian tour. Here's a nice, long article from the Melbourne Herald Sun, including a couple of videos.
The Education Department issued a stern directive that any student found to be absent on the Friday the Beatles arrived would be suspended.
One school went further. Unley High School — the facility that would later educate Australia’s first female prime minister — declared any student absent that Friday who could not produce a doctor’s note would be expelled. With no exceptions.
Unley students with a broad-minded GP for a parent were incredibly popular that weekend. Other headmasters took the smart move of choosing that Friday for the half-day Arbor Day public holiday to shortcut the Education Department’s ultimatum.
The Beatles were a glimpse of an exciting, unpredictable future — and most Down Under youngsters were primed for a promised land of infinite possibilities where youth culture set the agenda.
Radio presenter Bob Francis, then a 25-year-old DJ with 5AD, found himself at the centre of the furore.
Francis had no idea what was to come when he bemoaned the fact on radio that
the Beatles were yet another group to bypass Adelaide for the lack of an adequate pop-music venue.
The now 75-year-old, who retired from the airwaves last year, suggested 3000 signatures could be enough to prod the entrenched government of “Honest” Tom Playford into action.
Within three days he received 80,000.
“They even came in on rolls of toilet paper,” Francis, who is still stopped in the street and thanked for bringing the Beatles to town, says
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