This newsletter was written and produced on the lands of the Gadigal and Wangal people of the Eora Nation. We are deeply grateful to those who have preserved the rich history of Aboriginal custodianship of these lands.

Pride History Group’s next general meeting will be online on Monday 16 February at 6.30pm. We currently meet online on the third Monday of each month. Membership details can be found here https://www.pridehistory.org.au/membership

Photo: Mardi Gras 2013 courtesy of Teresa Savage

Happy Mardi Gras - Spotlight on our oral history collection

The theme of this year’s Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras is ECSTATICA! As we collaborate, celebrate and ask questions about Mardi Gras, it’s always good to be reminded of the origin of the parade, which was definitely an assertion of ecstatic defiance, and of the work of so many people to keep it alive and thriving over the years. Our collection of oral histories with the theme of Mardi Gras: 1978 - It Was A Riot gives insights from many people who were there at that very first event. Philip King was an organiser of Mardi Gras 1979 to 1984 and involved in establishing the early commercial side of the event. And for a more recent experience of the parade, listen to Renny Roccon, aka The Fabulous Wonder Mama, talk about her 2024 Mardi Gras Parade entry 'Drag Storytime is not a Crime'.

Panelists at the recent oral history event at the Inner West Pride Centre

For the Record: Capturing LGBTIQA+ Life Stories with Oral History

Thank you to everyone who joined us for our recent panel event on oral history and LGBTIQA+ storytelling. A huge thanks to our wonderful speakers: Jinny-Jane Smith, Shiva Chandra, Bruce Carter (panelists), Sam Cooling (moderator) and Shirleene Robinson (oral history overview), for sharing their insights, advice and experience with us all. We really enjoyed collaborating with Oral History NSW to bring this event to life! And, of course, our deep gratitude to Twenty10, for the warm welcome at Pride Hall in the Inner West Pride Centre.

Oral History Training

Pride History Group is offering a free training session for members only on how to conduct an oral history. Sunday 22nd February from 9am - 12.30pm at Benledi House, corner of Glebe Point and Wigram Roads in Glebe. Places are limited. Please contact Teresa Savage if you would like to attend.

So much going on!

Sunday 15th February. Come and visit Pride History Group at Mardi Gras Fair Day on at Victoria Park, Corner of Parramatta and City Road, Sydney. We will be there from 10am - 4pm. More information about fair day available here: https://www.mardigras.org.au/event/fair-day/
Friday 20th February 5.30 - 8pm. Feel the Love 2026 - Inner West Pride Walk Launch. Join us at the Inner West Pride Centre as we celebrate the Inner West's proud queer history and preview an exciting new LGBTQ+ history project launching soon across the Inner West! Our President, Shirleene Robinson AM, will lead a lively community discussion exploring the vibrant queer history of the Inner West — including significant people and places that will feature as part of the Inner West Pride Walk. Also featuring Nana Miss Koori and a diverse panel of local experts with lived experience and never before heard stories. Enjoy light refreshments, share stories with your community, and celebrate the start of Mardi Gras season in the Inner West. Book your free ticket here: https://events.humanitix.com/inner-west-pride-history-panel
Monday 23rd February. The NSW State Library presents Queer Sydney: Lost spaces, living stories, honouring lost spaces and imagining new futures for Sydney’s LGBTQI+ cultural life. Pride History Group Committee member Sam Cooling hosts a conversation with Graeme Aitken, of The Bookshop, Darlinghurst, Maeve Marsden of Queerstories, Jamaica Moana, rapper and creative director and Joy Ng of The Bearded Tit. From 6pm - 7.30pm in the State Library Auditorium on Macquarie Street. Book tickets here:https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/events/queer-sydney-lost-spaces-living-stories
Thursday 19th March 6.30pm at Emanuel Tsardoulias Community Library, Dulwich Hill. Sylvia Martin talks about her new book, Double Act, which documents the lifelong partnership of Australian artists Eirene Mort and Nora Kate Weston. Tickets and more information here.

Hunter Rainbow History News

Hunter Rainbow History (HRH) was established as a Hunter River region queer oral history and archive collecting group for the Living Histories archives at the University of Newcastle. This working relationship has allowed HRH to create an LGBTIQ digital archive:

https://livinghistories.newcastle.edu.au/nodes/view/59991

Living Histories also works with a local history film crew making “Stories of Our Town”. These are history documentaries for the people of Newcastle. In 2025 “Stories of our Town” decided to make a film about queer Newcastle. HRH was invited to get involved with the doco. So Generations of Pride started rolling and has become a milestone for LGBTIQA+ Newcastle. Sure, it is a story of our town, but some of the local history is of national importance.

Newcastle is NSW’s second city with a long history of mining, manufacturing and hosting defence bases. it has a relaxed vibe - lots of sun, sand and sex in the city. From 1820 when the Bogey Hole ocean baths was constructed, local men and soldiers and seamen established a busy beat culture in the town. As in other cities, there were clandestine social networks after WWII. And lets not forget the national uproar of a police blitz in 1952 uncovering a “society of perverts”.

What may come as a surprise to some, aversion therapy (ECT) was used to “cure” lesbians in Newcastle in the 1970s.

The Star Hotel on Hunter Street, had many claims to fame. In the 1970s local camp men and women met there and talked while drag performers like Stella and Glenda took to the stage. The Star was unique for being a drag venue, established by the local constabulary.

The city can lay claim to its unique role during the HIV/AIDS crisis. The Royal Newcastle Hospital was at the forefront of education, treatment and care of people living with HIV/AIDS in regional NSW as were the Catholic and Anglican churches.

In 1995, before marriage equality, a battle with the local NIB health fund by a gay family for family health cover led to a landmark court ruling. Family health cover is now a right for all Australian same sex families.

20 years later Newcastle sent a 74% Yes vote for marriage equality to Canberra.

Today the city has a very busy Pride Month and has set a precedent by electing Paige Johnson, a transgender woman, to Newcastle Council.

Newcastle: Generations of Pride tells a story of our town. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReielOJtFNQ

**A personal reflection on Generations of Pride.**

For me who grew up in Belmont, Lake Macquarie, leaving after school for Sydney University in 1972, the remark by Kerry Bashford, journalist, resonated: “anyone who was gay or different to the mainstream in Newcastle had to move to Sydney.” This film is a powerful tribute to those who stayed and forged a gay community.

My adolescent brushes with gay community include my first daring under-age drink with a provocative gay school friend in the Star Hotel middle bar as far back as 1968. Even at 15 years age, not out or aware, I could sense its forbidden function. Later occasional visits recall Glenda and her surgically improving glamour and performance skill. The documentary captures the cherished importance of this other side of Newcastle that I sadly missed – tales of enduring love, loyalty, caring and friendship.

Helen Gollan tells her story in the documentary. In the summer of 1971, before leaving for Sydney never to return, I was employed at Watt St Psychiatric Hospital. Hauntingly, while I was just passing through, Helen, herself a nurse, went through the hands of psychiatry at that same Watt St Hospital, her lesbian identity partly an issue. Helen was subject to oppressive treatment and coercive threats. In another Newcastle hospital her employment had been at risk for ‘being seen coming out of the Star Hotel’ about which she was ambushed in a disciplinary interrogation by managers after night duty. Helen who became a 78er concludes her story: “Be yourself. And if someone cannot stand up for themselves, stand beside them and offer help.”

The documentary also features Sister Annie Laurie, a live-in AIDS carer at Mackillop House during the dark 80s, who talks about the time when sick gay men were untouchables, and recounts how patients gave something back: “Their story telling and trusting us.” So it is with this rich documentary.

— Stephen Neill.

Australian LGBTIQ+ history news

2026 Rainbow Research Fellowship

The State Library of Queensland 2026 Rainbow Research Fellowship has been awarded to Monika O'Hanlon for her project, 'Out of the Archives'. Out of the Archives is a documentary podcast series that brings Queensland’s queer history to life. Each episode begins with a single artefact from John Oxley Library—photograph, protest flyer, costume, or love letter—and unpacks the story behind it, exploring what it reveals about LGBTQIA+ life and what remains hidden. Blending interviews, narration, archival research, and ambient sound, the series will also include short-form video content for social media to reach wider audiences. Read more here: https://www.slq.qld.gov.au/get-involved/fellowships-awards-and-residencies/queensland-memory-awards/rainbow-research-fellowship

Australian response to AIDS oral history project

The Australian Response to AIDS Oral History Project is a collaboration between the National Library of Australia and the Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations (AFAO). It features 110 interviews with politicians and policymakers, community leaders and activists, and those living with HIV/AIDS and their families, including former High Court Justice Michael Kirby and Bill Bowtell.

International LGBTIQ+ history news

transgender archive, UNIversity of victoria, canada.

Since 2007 the University of Victoria, Canada’s, Transgender Archive has been actively acquiring documents, rare publications, and memorabilia of persons and organizations associated with activism by and for Trans+ people.

Recommended Books

thank you for calling the lesbian line: A hidden history of queer women by elizabeth lovatt

Elizabeth Lovatt discovered a logbook from the early nineties which includes the notes made by lesbian volunteers of a London community-run phone service, Lesbian Line. Thank you for Calling the Lesbian Line is crafted from the entries in that logbook, along with their own experiences as a young lesbian trying to find their way. Chapters titled White fragility and the failure to listen and Trans Lesbians exist: get over it speak to the inclusiveness of the work. For queer historians, this book offers great insight into how we use archival material to draw a picture of queer life in a specific historical and political time.

Righting my world: Essays from the past half-century BY DENNIS ALTMAN

Dennis Altman is one of Australia’s leading voices in gay and queer rights. This collection of his essays, spanning sixty years of research, writing and activism offers a unique insight into the history of gay and queer liberation struggles, both in Australia and across the globe.

LESBIAN INTIMACIES AND FAMILY LIFE BY REBECCA JENNINGS

In this book, Rebecca Jennings explores the historical roots of parenting practices and familial patterns constructed by lesbians and same-sex attracted women living in Britain and Australia between 1945 and 2000. It considers women's lived experiences and how they expressed desire, fell in love, and created families during times of changing cultural, legal, and medical attitudes to female same-sex desire.

Do you want to help?

Pride History members are always busy on a number of projects. Do you want to get involved?
We can always use some help to:

log oral history interviews
chase up permissions to publish interviews
work on one of our current history projects

Or do you have your own initiative you're wanting to work on? Get in contact!

And don't forget our website www.pridehistory.org.au

Thanks for reading

Thanks to everyone who helped put this newsletter together - John Witte, Helen Caple, Sarah Midgley, Stephen Neill and Teresa Savage. Please let us know if you have any feedback about anything in this newsletter. We love to hear your views. Send your feedback to us here

Feel free to forward this newsletter to your friends and networks.

We are always happy to take enquiries for new memberships. Become a member of Pride History Group and get involved today!
And don't forget that members are encouraged to come along to monthly meetings to find out what's going on, catch up with friends and get involved.
We currently meet online on the 3rd Monday of each month. We hope to see you soon.

2026 Summer Edition Newsletter