With the return of this year’s winter months comes the 60th anniversary of the Beatles Australian tour.
Touching down in Sydney on June 11, 1964 the Beatles Australian tour left a significant mark on the Aussie population from Adelaide to our very own Dandenong Ranges.
During the Australian tour, Healesville, Sky High and Kenloch Estate in the Dandenong Ranges were all destinations that were the subject of an impromptu visit from none other than George Harrison.
Co author of the ‘When we was Fab: Inside The Beatles Australasian Tour 1964’ book Greg Armstrong said, “I was fascinated about this rumor that George Harrison went to Kenloch in Olinda and I found this article in the Boronia Leader newspaper about George making an appearance at Kenloch and having lunch.”
“I was fascinated by this story that had never been told, yet it was in the newspaper in 1964,” Greg said.
“My friend was getting married at Kenloch and he hooked me up with an interview with Kath Martin who was the owner of Kennloch one afternoon. She was there on the day that George Harrison literally just turned up for lunch.”
As the legendary tale goes, after being cooped up at the Southern Cross Hotel with the rest of the Beatles, George Harrison had a mind to get out and explore some of Victoria’s countryside.
Greg said, “There were always offers to take the boys out but on Wednesday the 17th of June there was an MG sports car secretly kept for George at the foothills of the Dandenongs out Ferntree Gully way.”
“So George went out. They hid him in a big Austen Princess car and they had a blanket over him. As the car drove out of the Southern Cross the press, in a couple of cars, were blocked off by one of the promoter’s cars which drove across the path of the exit of the hotel so that the press couldn’t follow George.”
Greg said, “George was spirited out into the burbs along with some of his entourage and they pulled up and he took the wheel of an MGB and went for a drive.”
Along with his entourage, George guided the MGB all the way down the Maroondah Highway to Healesville where they had a look around without any public interaction.
Greg said, “Then they ended up going up the Mt Dandenong tourist road, up to Sky High at Mt Dandenong where George shot a little bit of 8mm film on his home movie camera. Then, going through the tourist road, they went up through Olinda.”
“At some point George said, ‘I would like some lunch’ and somebody knew about Kenloch and so George Harrison literally rocked up at Kenloch which was a well-to-do restaurant,” Greg said.
“According to Kath Martin, the owner of Kenloch, the lunch service had actually finished when there was a knock on the door and there was this strange looking man standing there with his long hair and he said to Kath, ‘I’d like some loonch.’”
“Kath said ‘unfortunately we’ve just finished the lunch service’ but would a steak be ok?’” Of course that was going to be fine. They put them in the nice dining room and they had the fire built up because it was winter and it was a dreary day up in Olinda,” Greg said.
It was there in front of a raging fire on one of Olinda’s misty, soppy winter mornings that George Harrison is said to have had ‘the best meal he had eaten since arriving in Australia.’
Greg said, “Kath was there and I think her housekeeper was getting a bit hysterical. She kept saying “The Beatle, The Beatle. The singing Beatle.”
“Kath didn’t know who George was. She was a bit older in her early thirties, and just really didn’t know who they were. But she liked George. She said he had nice shiny hair and lovely eyes and he was tidy even though he had this hideously long hair,” Greg said.
“And she knew enough that there was a photograph taken on the family’s own camera. Kath’s kids were at boarding school but when they came home the weekend after, they were each given little cards that had been signed by George and word soon got out that George Harrison had visited Kenloch.”
