The end of a wonderful career - Judith Durham has passed away

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One of Australia’s most loved singers has passed away. Judith Durham, (79) who had a stellar career first with folk music group, The Seekers then as a solo artist, died on 5 August from a long-standing chronic lung disease. The Seekers formed in 1963. In 1967, they set an Australian record when more than 200,000 people attended a performance in Melbourne (nearly one-tenth of Melbourne’s population at the time. Judith left the group in 1968 to pursue a solo career. She married British pianist Ron Edgeworth in 1969. He died in 1994 from motor neurone disease. Judith was a patron of the Motor Neurone Disease Association of Australia. In 2000, Durham broke her hip and was unable to sing at the closing ceremony of the 2000 Olympic Games. However, she sang from a wheelchair at the closing of the Paralympics shortly after. In 2013, on the Seekers’ Golden Jubilee tour, she suffered a stroke. Although her ability to read and write was diminished, her singing was not affected. In 2015, she was named Victorian of the Year for her services to music and charitable organisations. I don’t know how well she was known outside of Australia. She certainly gave a lot of performances in the UK. She will be mourned by many in her home country. We were lucky enough to hear her sing with her sister at a jazz festival in York, Western Australia. It might have been the smallest audience she’d ever had. Photo courtesy: Allan warren, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons