Australian musician Judith Durham, best known as the lead singer of folk music group The Seekers, aged 79.
Her band sold more than 50 million records and had hits including I'll Never Find Another You, I Am Australian and Georgy Girl.
In a very emotional way ,Bruce Woodley has come out to pay tributes to the legend together with the seekers legend Judith
She left the group to go solo in 1968 and went on to release a number of studio albums.
Anthony Albanese, Australia's prime minister, paid tribute to Durham, calling her "a national treasure".
Judith Durham gave voice to a new strand of our identity and helped blaze a trail for a new generation of Aussie artists," he wrote on social media. "Her kindness will be missed by many, the anthems she gave to our nation will never be forgotten."
Durham was honoured multiple times during her lengthy career, including being awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for services to music in 1995 and the Centenary Medal in 2003.
She was also named the Victorian of the Year in 2015.
Born in Melbourne, Durham rose to international fame after joining The Seekers in 1962 alongside Athol Guy, Keith Potger and Bruce Woodley. She became the band's lead singer the following year, aged 20.
A year after becoming joint recipients of the Australian of the Year award in 1967, the group officially disbanded, but reunited to perform on multiple occasions - the last time being 2014.
Durham married the British pianist and musical director Ron Edgeworth in 1969, who died less than 30 years later after being diagnosed with motor neurone disease.
Durham was born Judith Mavis Cock on 3 July 1943 in Essendon, Victoria, to William Alexander Cock DFC, a navigator and World War II pathfinder, and his wife, Hazel (née Durham).
From her birth until 1949, she lived on Mount Alexander Road, Essendon, and attended Essendon Primary School. She spent summer holidays at her family's weatherboard house (which since has been demolished) on the west side of Durham Place in Rosebud.
Her father accepted work in Hobart, Tasmania, in 1949. From early 1950, the family lived in Taroona, a suburb of Hobart, where Durham attended the Fahan School before moving back to Melbourne, residing in Georgian Court, Balwyn, in 1956. She was educated at Ruyton Girls' School Kew and then enrolled at RMIT.
Durham at first planned to be a pianist and gained the qualification of Associate in Music, Australia (AMusA), in classical piano at the University of Melbourne Conservatorium.
She had some professional engagements playing piano and also had classical vocal training and performed blues, gospel and jazz pieces. Her singing career began one night at the age of 18 when she asked Nicholas Ribush, leader of the Melbourne University Jazz Band, at the Memphis Jazz Club in Malvern, whether she could sing with the band. In 1963, she began performing at the same club with Frank Traynor's Jazz Preachers, using her mother's maiden name of Durham.
In that year she also recorded her first EP, Judy Durham with Frank Traynor's Jazz Preachers, for W&G Records
Rest in power Queen
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