Graeme Read and Grant Whittingham are the people who bring ABBAMAIL to you. Graeme bought his first ABBA record - the Waterloo single way back in 1974. He ran the Australian ABBA Fan Club from 1976 - 1983 and has 30 years experience as an ABBA fan! He has also been involved in organising many ABBA Conventions and events in both Adelaide and Sydney, Australia. Grant Whittingham joined the Australian ABBA Fan Club a couple of years after it began and went on to play a key role in running it. Graeme was responsible for the very popular ABBA Nights at the Unicorn & Flinders Hotels in Sydney from 1987 - 1993. These nights were really the beginning of the ABBA revival in Australia. At the beginning of 1997 Graeme and Grant created ABBAMAIL, the internet mailing list, and immediately went on to produce Abba - The 20 Year Celebration, a two-day convention remembering ABBA's legendary Australian Tour in 1977. A company - Whitread Pty Ltd - was formed to oversee the administration of ABBAMAIL and its activities. A comprehensive mission statement has been developed which sets out what Graeme & Grant aspires to achieve with ABBAMAIL. ABBAMAIL quickly grew from a simple internet mailing list to a worldwide community and a major fan web site. To keep Australian fans who did not have access to the internet informed about ABBA, ABBAMAIL also began to create and distribute publications via post. Graeme and Grant believe that ABBAMAIL should not simply be about ABBA, but about their fans and the fan community. ABBA's fans are some of the most interesting, warm, wonderful and loyal people in the world. ABBAMAIL's goals focus on providing information, resources and services for these fans. As part of ABBAMAIL's commitment to ABBA fans more events for ABBA fans were organised after the success of "The 20 Year Celebration", Graeme also produced Women of ABBA, a one day event celebrating the contribution made by Agnetha and Frida to the success of ABBA. The following year, Summer Night City, ABBAMAIL's 1998 convention, was also a big success. Perhaps the most ambitious ABBAMAIL event of all was the two-day THE ABBA GENERATION: From ABBA to A*Teens, was held on November 20 and 21, 1999. And to celebrate the Australian visit of ABBA author, Carl Magnus Palm, ABBAMAIL 2001 was held on September 1, 2001. Magnus attended the event, was interviewed by Graeme and also did a book signing of his new (then) title Bright Lights, Dark Shadows: The Real Story of ABBA. And most recently, MAD 05 (Mini-ABBAMAIL Day 2005), brought together fans across Australia for the first ABBA fan event in four years. During the last decade ABBAMAIL has virtually reshaped the ABBA fan scene - both directly through it's internet activities and also indirectly through the effect it has had on ABBA related organisations around the world. Various members of ABBAMAIL and their websites - including Ian Cole, Trent Nickson and Sara Russell - are used by Carl Magnus Palm and Universal Music as reference sources for all things ABBA when they are preparing new CD and DVD releases. A key success of ABBAMAIL as an organisation has been the friendships - and even relationships - that have developed amongst its subscribers around the world. ABBAMAILer list members know that they can visit almost any country in the world and they'll be able to meet up with someone else from the list. Many ABBAMAILers have travelled internationally for the first time because of their involvement in ABBAMAIL. The friendships developed via the list and through subscribers travelling to meet each other has really made ABBAMAIL into a fan community rather than simply a mailing list. Since 1997, ABBAMAIL has grown from very humble beginnings to become a powerful force for the empowerment of ABBA fans. You can see how this empowerment has manifested itself through the many contributions ABBAMAILers have made to the ABBA experience on the net - look around the web and you'll see ABBAMAILers are behind the most successful and well regarded ABBA web sites on the internet. And ABBAMAIL's web site itself is the No. 1 source for reliable ABBA related news on the internet. And, ironically, when the official abbasite was being developed, it was ABBAMAIL and ABBAMAILers that the development team turned to for advice and ideas. At ABBAMAIL, we believe in ABBA fans sharing information, helping each other and making a positive contribution and impact on their fellow fans and ABBA fandom generally. And the success of this approach over the last decade is something that we are very proud of indeed. | 
