On June 12, 1964, Adelaide stopped pretending to be a quiet, respectable city. The Beatles arrived, and the collective psyche of South Australia promptly lost its trousers.

Let’s be clear: this wasn’t part of the original plan. Adelaide wasn’t even on the tour map. The Fab Four were meant to skip it entirely, presumably because Brian Epstein thought the City of Churches sounded more hymn than hysteria. But then Bob Francis, a local DJ with more gumption than budget, launched a campaign that amassed 80,000 signatures and one enormous guilt trip. Epstein blinked. The Beatles were coming.

They landed at 11:57 a.m. to a crowd that, conservatively, could’ve overthrown a small country. Estimates range from 200,000 to 350,000 people lining a 10-mile stretch from the airport to the city center—so let’s split the difference and say 300,000. It wasn’t a crowd. It was a civic meltdown. Rose petals were thrown. Toilet paper streamed like ticker tape. Children were hoisted onto shoulders, grandmothers screamed like they were teenagers, and actual teenagers screamed like they were being exorcised.

The band was driven through this chaos in an open-top motorcade, because subtlety had died sometime between “Love Me Do” and “She Loves You.” George Harrison likened it to a cowboy movie. John Lennon, never one to understate, called it “Fabulous—the best reception ever.” Derek Taylor, their long-suffering press officer, described it with the casual drama of a gospel revival: “The Messiah had come. Cripples threw away their sticks. Blind men leapt for joy.” Adelaide, evidently, had skipped straight to Beatle rapture.

When they reached Town Hall, the band emerged on the balcony like pop royalty surveying their domain. Paul McCartney gave a thumbs-up, despite being informed it was a rude gesture in Australia—naturally, he kept doing it. Below them, the crowd surged and howled and took photographs with cameras the size of microwaves. It was a moment. The kind that makes people say, “I was there,” even when they weren’t.

The concerts themselves were held at Centennial Hall—four 28-minute performances over two nights that sold out 12,000 seats in five hours and left 50,000 hopefuls sulking into their Vegemite. With Ringo sidelined by illness, the drums were manned by Jimmie Nicol, a last-minute understudy whose brief stint as a Beatle remains one of rock’s most surreal footnotes. He played. People screamed. No one remembers anything else.

Outside the hall, it was full social combustion. Schools threatened expulsion for truancy. The Education Department issued warnings. And yet, children vanished en masse. Doctor’s notes were forged with the kind of dedication usually reserved for war crimes tribunals. The teenagers weren’t just skipping class—they were skipping history to attend it.

In hindsight, this wasn’t just a concert tour. It was a rupture. A city famous for its decorum suddenly found itself writhing on the pavement, screaming for boys with mop-tops. It was the cultural equivalent of being hit by a glitter-covered truck. Adelaide, the demure and well-behaved, had its first taste of collective madness—and it loved it.

The Beatles left. Adelaide never quite recovered, and for one delirious, glitter-soaked moment, the City of Churches had rebranded itself as the Cathedral of Chaos.