Johnny O'Keefe and the Dee Jays were not originally selected to be on the tour but when Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps were offloaded in Honolulu on the way to Australia both Lee Gordon and Alan Heffernan who were aware that Johnny and the Dee Jays had a strong following in Sydney went to Valentine's restaurant which was below O'keefe's father's furniture store where Johnny and the Dee Jays were rehearsing and asked him about getting the group to play Gene Vincent's music as well as backing up Alis Lesley and Eddie Cochran. O'Keefe would only agree if he could perform 3 songs in his own segment so they did.
The tour began in Wollongong on October 1st and O'keefe got booed, but he won the crowd over. The same thing happened in Sydney but after that they never got booed again and the rest of the tour was very successful packing out the venues. In Adelaide there was a problem was when the police appoarched Alan Heffernan that if the crowd became too wild the police would close the show down. In Melbourne a near riot occured in the ringside seats when Little Richard threw the clothes he had shed into the crowd and it took the attendants some time to break the group trying to gain possession of it up. The police told him not to do the striptease in the second session.
During the middle of the tour, he shocked the public by announcing his decision to follow a life in the ministry. During a flight from Melbourne to Sydney, he had seen the plane's red hot engines and felt angels were holding it up. During the Sydney performance, Little Richard saw a bright red fireball flying across the sky above him and was deeply shaken. He took the event, later revealed as the launching of the first artificial Earth satellite Sputnik 1, as a sign from God to repent from performing secular music and his wild lifestyle and enter the ministry. Whilst in Newcastle, he threw his rings, bracelets and necklaces into the water when the tour was crossing the Hunter River. Returning to the states ten days early, Little Richard later learned that his original return flight had crashed into the Pacific Ocean solidifying his belief he was doing as God wanted.