Time

5:00 PM - 6:30 PM

Agenda

Talk: 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM Refreshments available after the talk

Cost

Free of charge

Pride, Protest, Performance and Politics

World Pride is a global event, but we live and experience most of our histories in local contexts. To celebrate the local in this global moment, come along to engage with four moments in the queer history of Darlinghurst and its neighbouring communities. The session will explore how people living in and around Darlinghurst came together to transform the worlds and stories in which queer lives were lived and understood.  Hear from four researchers in a moderated discussion about their work, ask questions from the panel to hear how these stories can inform us today, and engage with this history by sharing your own stories about queer activism.

Dr Scott McKinnon will discuss activist responses to a series of police raids on Club 80, a gay Oxford Street venue, in 1983. The raids caused outrage in the gay community and ultimately played an important role in the campaign to decriminalise male homosexual sex in New South Wales.

Dr Geraldine Fela will tell the forgotten stories of nurses from St Vincent's in the early years of the HIV and AIDS epidemic. As both carers and activists, nurses in the Darlinghurst area worked closely with the affected communities to develop a form of health activism in one of the neighbourhood's hardest hit by the virus in Australia. 

Professor Robert Reynolds will recount how campaigns for street safety on Oxford Street in the early 2000s were shaped by much deeper questions about the future of gay life.

Dr Liza-Mare Syron will examine the emergence of Koori-Gras, a First Nations qweer creative cultural program that is now an integral part of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.  These moments of ‘sparkling defiance’ on stage raise crucial questions about where historians usually ‘look’ for evidence of political action and the ways in which the SGLMG has been a crucial space of First Nations Qweer political mobilisation and contest.

Event Registration

If you need any assistance, please contact events@paulramsayfoundation.org.au.


AIDS remembrance float, Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade, Darlinghurst, 1997
Photographer: C. MOORE Hardy
City of Sydney Archives

Speakers


Dr Geraldine Fela
(She/Her)

Dr Geraldine Fela is an early career researcher at Monash University in the School of Philosophical, Historical and International Studies. In 2023 she will take up a fellowship in the Department of History and Archelogy, Macquarie University. Her research explores the intersection of oral history, labour history and histories of gender and sexuality. 

Dr Liza-Mare Syron
(Nyunda/Nyun gung)

Dr Liza-Mare Syron is an Indigenous Scientia Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Arts, Architecture and Design at UNSW where she is also the Co-Associate Dean Indigenous.  Liza-Mare has family ties to the Birrbay people from the Mid North Coast of NSW. She has published widely on Indigenous Performing Arts practices in both contemporary and historical contexts and is a founding member of Moogahlin Performing Arts where she is currently a member of the Artistic Directorate.  

Dr Scott McKinnon
(He/Him)

Dr Scott McKinnon is a historian who has published extensively on histories and geographies of sexuality in Australia, including his book Gay Men at the Movies: Cinema, Memory and the History of a Gay Male Community (Intellect, 2016). He is a Research Fellow at La Trobe University and the vice president of Pride History Group and Oral History NSW.

Prof Robert Reynolds
(He/Him)

Prof Robert Reynolds is a leading historian of sexuality in Australia. Just some of his books include What Happened to Gay Life? (New South, 2007), Gay and Lesbian, Then and Now: Australian stories from a social revolution (Black Inc, 2017) and many others. He is a Professor of Modern History at Macquarie University.  

Dr Leigh Boucher
(He/Him)

Leigh Boucher is a historian at Macquarie University where his research centres on gender, sexuality and race in Australian political and cultural history. He is currently working on a project that investigates the early years of the HIV/AIDs epidemic in Darlinghurst and the community-led response that took shape in that neighbourhood. 

Venue

Yirranma Place is a community precinct for social purpose with philanthropy at its heart. 

“Yirranma” is translated from Gadigal to “many-create”. This indicates the purpose of the precinct - a place where people come together to create and connect in the Darlinghurst neighbourhood. Yirranma Place is a space where for-purpose organisations, social enterprises, and people working for social change can collaborate; and for the local community to enjoy, from picking up a coffee to browsing displays, or attending an event.

Blue Gum Hall

Yirranma Place
262 Liverpool St
Darlinghurst NSW 2010


Getting here

Bus:
  • 389: The nearest bus stop is Burton St opposite the National Art School
  • 380 + 333: Bus stop is located on Oxford Street Taylor Square; Oxford St, Stand D
Train:
  • Kings Cross station is an 8-minute walk via Darlinghurst Rd
  • Museum station is a 12-minute walk via Liverpool St
Parking:
  • There is metered street parking available, but no onsite parking
  • The nearest parking station is Wilsons Parking on Riley Street