The Hunters + Collectors breakthrough came in 1986 with the album Human Frailty. The album began with the writing of "Throw Your Arms Around Me", their most personal and romantic song. "Say Goodbye" soon followed that with its memorable chorus "You don't make me feel like I'm a woman anymore!"

The rest of the album documents, in the most candid terms, the course of a doomed love affair that Mark Seymour was then going through. A parallel narrative is also running through the album, which is of a group adjusting to life on the road and an exploration of what it means to be Australian in the 1980s.