Return To Australia and Break Up
In March 1967, the Seekers returned to Australia for a homecoming tour, which included a performance at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl in Melbourne, attended by an estimated audience of 200,000. Guinness Book of World Records (1968) listed it as the greatest attendance at a concert in the Southern Hemisphere. Melburnians were celebrating the annual Moomba Festival, a free community festival, and many thousands were enjoying other attractions but are included in the crowd estimate. The Seekers were accompanied during their 20-minute set by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Hector Crawford. Film of their appearance was incorporated into their 1967 Australian television special The Seekers Down Under, which was screened on Channel 7 and drew a then record audience of over 6 million.
In January 1968, on Australia Day, in recognition of its achievements, the group was named joint Australians of the Year – the only group to have this honour bestowed upon it. They personally accepted their awards from Harold Holt, the Prime Minister of Australia, during their tour. During this visit, the group filmed another TV special, The World of the Seekers, which was screened in cinemas before being screened nationally on Channel 9 to high ratings and is in the Top 10 most watched TV shows of the 20th century in Australia.
In July 1968, Durham announced that she was leaving the Seekers to pursue a solo career and the group disbanded. Their final performance, on 7 July, was screened live by the BBC as a special called Farewell the Seekers, with an audience of more than 10 million viewers. The special had been preceded by a week-long season at London's Talk of the Town nightclub and a live recording of one of their shows was released as a live LP record, The Seekers Say Goodbye Live from the Talk of the Town. It reached No. 2 on the UK charts. Also in July, the compilation album The Seekers' Greatest Hits was released and spent 17 weeks at No. 1 in Australia. It was re-titled as The Best of the Seekers in the UK and spent one week at No. 1 in February 1969, managing to knock the Beatles' (White Album) off the top of the charts and preventing the Rolling Stones' Beggars Banquet from reaching the top spot. The album spent 125 weeks in the charts in the UK.
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“Return to her? and fifty men dismissed?
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Necessity’s sharp pinch.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“To save the theatre, the theatre must be destroyed, the actors and actresses must all die of the plague. They poison the air, they make art impossible. It is not drama that they play, but pieces for the theatre. We should return to the Greeks, play in the open air: the drama dies of stalls and boxes and evening dress, and people who come to digest their dinner.”
—Eleonora Duse (1858–1924)
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—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)