The Seekers’ Earliest Known TV Appearance Has Been Unearthed: Watch

The earliest surviving television appearance of The Seekers, Australia’s most successful music export of the 1960s, has been rediscovered, digitized and shared online.

The eight-minute video captures Judith Durham, Keith Potger, Bruce Woodley and Athol Guy lip-syncing to two of their own songs, “A Closer Walk with Thee” and “Myra,” for an appearance on the Graham Kennedy-hosted live variety show In Melbourne Tonight.

In the clip, Kennedy, the late Australian TV legend remarks: “There’s no gimmicks there, and it’s a great, strong voice, isn’t it?”

That performance beamed out March 23, 1964 on GTV, and hasn’t been broadcast for six decades, according to the National Film and Sound Archive, the organization that collects, preserves and shares Australia’s audiovisual culture.

“This is arguably the tape that kickstarted The Seekers’ international success,” explains NFSA senior curator Simon Smith. “Forgotten for 60 years, it’s now digitized and available for the world to enjoy.”

According to the vault, the folk-pop trailblazers sent the black and white 16mm film as promotional reel to U.K. talent agency The Grade Organisation.

The rest is recorded music history.

With their 1965 song “I’ll Never Find Another You,” The Seekers became the first Australian act to hit No. 1 on the U.K. singles chart.

Later that year, they climbed the U.K. chart summit again with “The Carnival Is Over.” In the space of just two years, they grabbed six U.K. top 10 hits, including their best-known track “Georgy Girl,” which was nominated for an Academy Award for original song and reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100.

In 1967, at the very peak of their powers, the four-piece performed to an audience of 200,000 — still considered the biggest concert crowd in the southern hemisphere — and they were named Australians of the Year.

Durham embarked on a solo career in 1967, and reunited with the band on several occasions, including in 2013, for the Seekers’ 50th anniversary tour. Those best-laid plans, however, took a back seat when Durham suffered a cerebral hemorrhage.

She recovered, and the following year Durham and her bandmates were individually recognized as Officers of the Order of Australia.

The Seekers were inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame in 1995, they received the Ted Albert Award for outstanding services to Australian music at the APRA Awards in 2013, and they’ve had a stamp issued in their memory. Durham died in 2022, aged 79, after suffering complications from a long-standing lung condition.

The NFSA acquired the footage to mark the 70th anniversary of the launch of television in Australia, a moment that was timed to coincide with the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne. Keith Potger, curator of Judith Durham’s estate memorabilia, donated the rare film.

Read more on The Seekers’ early days and watch the footage here.