Metal advertising sign with black and red text on a white background.

Text reads: 'Terry Dear comperes Australian Amateur Hour Thursdays at 8! 3AW Melbourne'. 

Still image from the radio program Australia's Amateur Hour.

From right: host Terry Dear, Tex Foote, Tifori Peni, Rodney Kindness, an unidentified man and a female dancer.

All but Terry Dear are in Polynesian dress.

From left to right: Len London, an unidentified woman, Clive Amadio and Dick Fair, gathered around a microphone.

Glass slide advertisement for radio talent show Australia's Amateur Hour.

Text reads: 'We give all Australia its chance in Australia's Amateur Hour. Thursdays 8 PM. 4AY with Terry Dear'.

A performance by vocal quartet The Trinamics (featuring Keith Potger, later of The Seekers) on radio talent show Australia's Amateur Hour.

Excerpt from episode 901, recorded at Box Hill Town Hall, Melbourne.

Australia's Amateur Hour was a pioneering talent show produced by AWA that became a pop-culture phenomenon. The program was heard across Australian radio stations from 1940 to 1958 after beginning on home station 2GB Sydney, hosted by Harry Dearth (1940–42). Subsequent hosts included Dick Fair (1942–1950) and Terry Dear (1950–58).

Many prominent entertainers debuted or were ‘discovered’ on the show, including Harold Blair, Johnny O'Keefe, Bobby Limb, Donald Smith and Chad Morgan. This clip is of Chad Morgan's appearance on the Brisbane heat of Australia's Amateur Hour on 23 October 1952, recorded at the Lyric Theatre. Performing 'I'm The Sheik of Scrubby Creek', Morgan went on to win the heat, the semi-finals in Sydney and to place second in the finals of 1952.

The show featured a wide range of musical genres and performance types from a diverse range of participants – including First Nations Australian performers George Hill, Jimmy Little and Olive and Eva, as well as new European migrants to Australia displaced after the Second World War. It was sponsored by Lever Brothers’ laundry soap Rinso for its 19-year run, making it one of the best-known products in Australia at the time. The NFSA holds approximately 60 episodes out of the 925 that aired.

An excerpt from Australia's Amateur Hour episode 901, recorded 27 June 1957 at Hibernian Hall, Cairns, Queensland. It features a performance by vocal group the Reading Sisters (Phronsie, Wilma and Dulcie Reading), with guitarist Walter Pitt (brother of Georgia Lee).

Australia's Amateur Hour was a pioneering talent show produced by AWA that became a pop-culture phenomenon. The program was heard across Australian radio stations from 1940 to 1958 after beginning on home station 2GB Sydney, hosted by Harry Dearth (1940–42). Subsequent hosts included Dick Fair (1942–1950) and Terry Dear (1950–58).

Many prominent entertainers debuted or were ‘discovered’ on the show, including Harold Blair, Johnny O'Keefe, Bobby Limb, Donald Smith and Chad Morgan. The show featured a wide range of musical genres and performance types from a diverse range of participants – including First Nations Australian performers George Hill, Jimmy Little and Olive and Eva, as well as new European migrants to Australia displaced after the Second World War.

It was sponsored by Lever Brothers’ laundry soap Rinso for its 19-year run, making it one of the best-known products in Australia at the time. The NFSA holds approximately 60 episodes out of the 925 that aired.

Host Terry Dear introduces and interviews Dick Fair, who talks about blind First Nations musician George Hill, a cornet and guitar player.

The segment includes George's original introduction and performance from episode 401.

This is an excerpt from the final episode of radio talent show Australia's Amateur Hour, 13 December 1958.

Excerpt from the final episode of radio talent show Australia's Amateur Hour, 13 December 1958.

The hosts talk about some of the locations the program travelled to, including an excerpt from an interview with First Nations artist Albert Namatjira in Alice Springs.

There are also clips from the program recorded in Darwin and Fiji.

Host Terry Dear introduces and interviews 'New Australians'  Paula and Olga Perledo from Greece.

They had arrived in Australia five months earlier on the USS General CC Ballou and they perform 'Ciocârlia', a Romanian folk tune.

This is an excerpt from the final episode of radio talent show Australia's Amateur Hour, 13 December 1958.

In this excerpt from the final episode of radio talent show Australia's Amateur Hour (Episode 925, 13 December 1958).

Host Terry Dear introduces the Managing Director of Lever Brothers to talk about sponsorship and history of the program.

Dear says, 'Ladies and gentlemen, I think it may safely be said that the introduction of Australia's Amateur Hour was the beginning of an era in which radio entertainment reached its greatest heights...'.