Mark Seymour

Mark Seymour was born in Benalla and grew up in country Victoria. His family was musical. Paula, his mother, encouraged all her children to sing and play musical instruments.

Mark learned classical piano for a time, but found the technical discipline a little challenging and soon moved onto guitar in his early adolescence. The family moved to Melbourne in 1972. Life in the outer suburbs was, as many of us well know, excruciatingly boring, and though Mark was a conscientious student, he found that there was simply not enough to do, particularly as his family were deeply religious Catholics. For Mark, adolescence was dead time.

The brakes were on and stayed that way pretty much until he graduated from Melbourne Uni in 1978 and became a schoolteacher two years later. At that time he realised, in a rare moment of clarity, that his life was going the wrong way entirely and that drastic action was required. Towards the end of his formal education he began going out to pubs to watch rock bands.

Around the turn of the decade in Melbourne, there were bands aplenty in Melbourne and Mark became hooked on volume and cold beer. Mark formed Hunters and Collectors in 1980, with a bunch of Uni friends.