What happened here?
During their only Australian tour in June 1964, The Beatles stayed at the Sheraton Hotel on Macleay Street in the Sydney harbourside suburb of Potts Point. The band arrived in Sydney on 11 June to scenes of pandemonium — around 1,500 fans greeted them at the airport, held back by 300 police officers, while hundreds more stationed themselves outside the hotel.
On 18 June — Paul McCartney's 22nd birthday — the band stepped out onto the balcony of their top-floor suite and waved to the crowd gathered on the street below. The resulting photographs, showing all four Beatles leaning over the railing with Potts Point stretching out behind them, became some of the most iconic images from their Australian visit.
That evening, the band played the first of six shows over three days at Sydney Stadium, each performance seen by around 12,000 people. Afterwards, a birthday party was held for McCartney back at the Sheraton. Among the guests were seventeen girls who had won a Daily Mirror newspaper competition: "Why I would like to be a guest at a Beatle's birthday party."
The 1964 tour of Australasia was a landmark moment in the country's cultural history — the first time Beatlemania had reached Australian shores. The Sheraton Hotel building still stands at 40 Macleay Street, now known as the Landmark Terrace. The balcony where the band appeared is clearly visible from the street below, and the building remains largely in its original form.
