Gay and lesbian life went public in the 70s. Speaking up and standing out, gay men and women took to the streets proudly demanding to be seen, heard and accepted.  

These chapters draw from stories and records in the Library’s collection to explore how the gay and lesbian rights movement emerged in NSW in the 1970s.  

‘By the end of the 1960s … there was a real sense of fundamental change, of liberation, even revolution in the air’

— activist Liz Ross, 2009

Before the 1970s same-sex relationships were taboo in most Western societies. In Australia, lesbianism was largely unrecognised and sex between men was illegal. Same-sex attraction forced many people to live secretive and fearful lives.

The 1960s ushered in an era of change. Civil rights movements around the world created opportunities to reform society. The 1969 Stonewall riots in New York triggered the rise of gay rights movements internationally and Australians soon took up the fight. Sydney quickly became a hub of activism. ‘Coming out’ — openly admitting same-sex orientation at the risk of rejection, discrimination, abuse or even death — became a brave political strategy, challenging the sexually conservative attitudes of Australian society.

These chapters draw from stories and records in the Library’s collection to explore how the gay and lesbian rights movement emerged in NSW in the 1970s.

— activist academic Garry Wotherspoon 

to our Reference Group of 70s activists and historians who have guided this project and so generously shared their experiences and insights: Johnny Allen, Robert French, CMoore Hardy, Robyn Kennedy, Pam Stein, Garry Wotherspoon and Sue Wills. Special thanks also to the donors, lenders and other contributors who have made this project possible.

If this material raises issues for you, these are some of the community groups that offer information and support: 

ACON 

Twenty 10/Gay Counselling Service of NSW

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This project focuses on gay and lesbian activism in Sydney the 1970s and includes terminology in use at that time. It is part of a larger focus on LGBTQI+ history and life that will unfold at the Library over the next three years. Find out more about our LGBTQI+ collecting focus on the Library website. 

The Library acknowledges that many of the archival practices on which our collections have been built are laden with conscious and unconscious biases that have silenced or marginalised the voices of many, including LGBTQI+ people. The Library is committed to creating an inclusive space where LGBTQI+ people feel welcome.

Use our feedback form to leave a comment, or to share a story or experience.  

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‘You have to imagine a time when there was nothing positive in the media, or anywhere, about homosexuality’

— broadcaster and activist Julie McCrossin, 2019

In the 1970s few Australians had any understanding of sexual difference, and the mainstream media rarely mentioned homosexuality except as sinful, criminal or sick. Fed up with lies, ridicule and abuse, a small group of lesbians and gay men decided to speak out.

Sydney friends and neighbours Christabel Poll and John Ware started the Campaign Against Moral Persecution (CAMP Inc) as a letter writing campaign to challenge public statements misrepresenting gay people. On 10 September 1970 the Australian reported the formation of CAMP with an invitation to join the group. A week later Ware was interviewed on the ABC television program This Day Tonight.

The effect of this prominent media coverage was electric. Newspapers, magazines, radio and television rushed to report on the ‘new-found’ minority group and public attitudes began to shift. The media coverage also let gay men and women across the country know they were not alone.

View in catalogue

On Saturday 19 September 1970 Australians opened the magazine section of the country’s only national newspaper to see something that had never appeared in print here before. With their faces clearly visible and using their full names, psychology student John Ware and public servant Christabel Poll became the first publicly self-identified gay man and lesbian in Australia.

Launching an attack on the decades-long culture of concealing same-sex orientation, Poll and Ware wanted to change public opinion and the law. With its wide readership, the Australian gave them an enormous promotional boost. The article included contact details for their newly formed group CAMP Inc, and within a year it had 1500 members.

The Australian, 19 September 1970

Sydney’s gay rights activists made good use of the mainstream media to challenge society’s attitudes and build momentum for change. Publishers and journalists responded to growing public interest in gay rights issues in the 1970s and articles by and about lesbians and gay men were soon in print. Local activists were determined to archive any mentions of gay men and lesbians in the press, diligently preserving first-hand accounts of this breakthrough era in gay rights history.

The articles in these scrapbooks — clipped from local and international newsletters, periodicals and newspapers — provide important primary evidence about the lives, interests and issues facing gay men and lesbians and the impact of the gay rights movement on commentators of the day.

Terrence Bell, editor, journalist and publisher, was as an activist in Sydney’s Gay Liberation movement in the early 1970s. After setting up the new Sydney Gay Lib Centre in Glebe Point Road in August 1973, he became co-ordinator of the group and took on the task of organising Gay Pride Week, Australia’s first national gay pride festival. With fellow SGL activist Gary Schliemann, Bell also edited the September 1973 Gay Pride Week issue of the University of NSW’s student newspaper Tharunka. 

As recalled by fellow activist John Lee in 1989, '[Bell] seemed to come to gay liberation as a fully formed fag, [he] could type, give speeches, look beautiful at demonstrations. And he threw himself into organisational work'.

One evening early in April 1973 Bell and Paul Foss were at the Sydney Gay Liberation (SGL) centre in Glebe for a meeting. When only a few people turned up, they decided to type up a leaflet to hand out to children at the local schools. About 100 of their ‘Are you a poofter?’ leaflets were distributed to students at a nearby school producing a predictable response — one parent called the Education Department, the police and the media. Foss was given an opportunity to explain the reasoning behind the leaflet on the ABC current affairs program This Day Tonight.  

It was a short-lived conflict but, ever the careful archivist, Bell carefully pasted a copy of the leaflet into his scrapbook.

View in catalogue 

David McDiarmid was a sexual radical whose early work was focused on ‘coming out’. His diverse creative career included fashion, craft, interior design, graphic design, painting, bookmaking and agitprop poster art. Through the 1970s McDiarmid travelled between Sydney, Melbourne and overseas, recording the evidence of his wide-ranging personal, political and artistic interests and activities in this scrapbook. 

McDiarmid came from Melbourne to live in Sydney for the first time in 1972. With his then partner John Lee, he helped organise Sydney Gay Liberation and even designed the group’s logo. Fervent in his belief that the ‘personal is political’, on 11 July 1972 he became the first gay person to be arrested at a gay rights demonstration in Australia.

On 24 June 1978 McDiarmid took part in the ‘Day of International Gay Solidarity’ march through the city and in the first Mardi Gras later that night. He designed, printed and hand-coloured the poster for the first openly lesbian and gay group art exhibition held at Sydney’s Watters Gallery in association with the 4th National Homosexual Conference that year. At the demonstration arising out of this conference, he was again arrested. The charge was later dropped, with the letter he received from NSW Police Department duly pasted into his scrapbook.

View in catalogue

A potent ingredient to the success of any political movement is the creation of its own media. Australia’s first community-based gay news magazine, CAMP Ink, was published in November 1971. It was quickly followed by a more commercial gay press that moved away from political activism as its primary focus.

William & John, Australia’s first magazine for the gay community, was launched in January 1972, followed by a flurry of other short-lived lifestyle-oriented newspapers and magazines with titles like Butch, Stallion and Gayzette.

The women’s liberation movement produced a range of newspapers and magazines expressing feminist ideas. This ‘alternative’ women’s media included articles by and about lesbians, and published the occasional lesbian edition.

Priced at $1, William & John was ‘Australia’s first professional camp magazine’. Named after its founding editors, William Easton and John Baker, the glossy 40-page monthly with a colour centrefold combined serious feature articles with raunchy pictures, presenting ‘entertainment and information’ at the same time. An affiliated mail order business offered readers a range of products, including pin-up copies of photographs published in William & John, novelty sex greeting cards and playing cards, posters and imported sex toys.

But from the start William & John faced difficulties with the censors, whose restrictions required full-frontal nudes to be ‘masked' in its Victorian edition.

Read the full first issue of William & John in the catalogue.

Despite their self-censorship, the publishers of William & John were summoned to court on a total of 64 obscenity charges, relating to printing and publishing ‘indecent’ material. Facing a costly obscenity trial, and despite a vigorous campaign for support, the magazine closed after just eight issues in 1973.

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‘It’s absolute nonsense [the assumption] that people are born heterosexual … I just don’t think that’s true. People are born sexual, full stop.’

— CAMP member Sue Wills, Chequerboard, ABC TV, 1972

On 31 October 1972 two gay couples came out on prime-time television in an episode of the ABC’s documentary series Chequerboard. Peter Bonsall-Boone and his partner Peter de Waal, and Sue Wills and her partner Gabrielle (Gaby) Antolovich were members of CAMP who agreed to appear on the show as a political statement. The program also broadcast Australian television’s first kiss between men. 

The ramifications were swift. A week after the show went to air, Bonsall-Boone was sacked from his job as church secretary at St Clement’s Anglican Church in Mosman.  

Outraged at the sacking of Peter Bonsall-Boone, 200 demonstrators joined forces on 12 November to stage a noisy protest outside St Clement’s Church, disrupting its Sunday service. Demonstrators accused the church of hypocrisy, claiming that the minister and others had ‘tolerated’ Peter Bonsall-Boone’s sexuality until it was made public.

Widely reported in the media, it was the biggest demonstration by the gay rights movement yet seen in Australia.

View in catalogue
 

— Sue Wills in conversation with oral historian Catherine Freyne.

— activist Robyn Kennedy, 2020

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‘Have just received my second issue of Camp Ink, which I think great company to someone like myself, feeling so isolated in a smaller city’

— letter to the editor, CAMP Ink, January 1971

Fifty years ago, in July 1970, Australia’s first political organisation for same-sex oriented men and women was set up in Sydney. The group called itself the Campaign Against Moral Persecution Inc, generating the playful acronym CAMP, a word commonly associated with homosexuality.
 

A few months later, CAMP’s founders put together the first issue of CAMP Ink, Australia’s first homosexual rights magazine. They printed 500 copies, priced at 20 cents each, and within a year the print run rose to 5000. Initially intended as a news magazine, CAMP Ink soon became a key source of information for and about lesbians and gay men. It was sent to opinion makers in the media, government and public domain in an effort to draw their attention to gay issues.

From 'Gay Power on the Move', Bulletin, 13 Mar 1971.

View in Trove, National Library of Australia

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CAMP Ink was mailed out to members and sold on the streets, primarily as a political ‘coming out’ action, and also stocked by a few bookshops. Angus & Robertson bookshop displayed the December 1971 issue Camp Ink in its shop window, featuring the front cover words: ‘We’ve come out of our closets to wish you a Merry Christmas’ accompanied by photographs of 35 CAMP members. One of them worked in the building next door to the bookshop, and when the cover was seen by his work colleagues, it resulted very literally in his ‘coming out’.

As part of its Sydney LGBT Pioneer Names Project, the Pride History Group is seeking to identify the people who bravely appeared on CAMP Ink’s 71/72 Christmas over.

If you recognise any of the unidentified faces, contact info@pridehistory.org.au

Camp Ink was one of the few ways the national gay and lesbian rights movement could bind the various state-based organisations together. It also served to build momentum for the group’s political activities and create a sense community for gay men and women living around the country. Funded through membership fees, the magazine depended on the financial support it received from CAMP. It was published (with declining frequency) until March 1977. 

— academic activist Garry Wotherspoon talks about CAMP

Read the full series of 39 issues via links to Trove, National Library of Australia website. 

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Talking openly about homosexuality sparked hope in many lesbians and gay men living in isolation around the country. As activists fought for change, they created one of the most successful reform movements in Australian history.

Activists lobbied politicians and community leaders for law reform to address discrimination and violence. They used humour and catchy slogans to attract media attention and gain public support. They made the personal political, marching in solidarity and ‘shocking the straights’ with spontaneous actions known as ‘zaps’.

Graffiti affirmed that ‘Lesbians are lovely’ and ‘Gay is good’, while newsletters, manifestos, flyers and posters spread the word about gay issues. Badges and T-shirts proudly displayed a connection to the cause. Gay and lesbian groups encouraged shared identity and offered safe meeting places.

Festivals and conferences created temporary havens of community and the chance to build new fields of study. Gay Pride Week 1973 was a highpoint for Sydney’s gay rights movement, but it was also a turning point as groups began to change or split apart, looking for different ways to achieve their goals. In 1978 and 79 Sydney activists joined tens of thousands in solidarity in International Days of Gay and Lesbian events around the world.

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The 1970s was one of the most volatile periods in Australia’s political history, with mass demonstrations and grassroots actions taking place to protest social injustices. Photography played an important part in increasing the influence and visibility of lesbians and gay men. By documenting the marches and demonstrations of their disenfranchised and marginalised community, gay and lesbian photographers helped activists gain a voice in the politics of the day.

Phillip Potter was the staff photographer for CAMP Ink and documented the group’s early civil rights street actions from 1971.

John Storey was a self-taught photographer who ran his own commercial photography business in Sydney from 1979, until his move into academia in 1985. Working as a free-lance photographer, he documented the emergence of the gay liberation movement in Sydney.

Lesbian photographer Anne Roberts worked for the Tribune newspaper as a reporter and photographer documenting the women’s movement and Sydney’s May Day marches through the early 1970s. Her ‘on the spot’ photojournalism was an extension of her personal activism.

Geoff Friend kept his camera at the ready throughout 1978, getting among the action on the city’s streets to document the ferment of gay rights in the months after the Mardi Gras riots of 1978.

— note from John Ware to Paul Foss, 11 October 1971

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On 6 October 1971 a noisy Friday night protest organised by CAMP Inc became Australia’s first gay rights demonstration. Facing the Sydney crowds during the evening rush hour, gay men and lesbians bravely ‘came out’ together to picket Liberal Party politicians and lobby for law reform.

Sydney Gay Lib’s more radical ‘pop-up’ street protests sought to embarrass bystanders and grab media attention. A lunchtime demo outside ABC headquarters in the CBD on 11 July 1972 railed against the ABC’s refusal to air a program on homosexuality produced by current affairs program This Day Tonight. The arrest of artist and activist David McDiarmid was the first arrest at a gay demonstration in Australia. Later that month, as part of CAMP’s Sex Lib Week actions, lesbians and gay men were urged to ‘forsake the ghettos and the closets’ and mingle with late-night shopping crowds on the city’s busy streets.

Gay rights demonstrations would grow steadily bigger through the 1970s and were key to the movement’s success.

Photos by Phillip Potter, Lex Watson collection

View in catalogue

From 1972 gay and lesbian activists began participating in Sydney’s May Day parade, an annual community solidarity and protest march through the city.

In 1978 Sydney lesbians and gay men answered the call to join a Day of International Gay Solidarity. A morning march through the city’s streets on 24 June was followed by an afternoon forum addressed by gay rights pioneer Dennis Altman. The evening street parade or ‘mardi gras’ saw revellers partying down Oxford Street before police attacked, bashing and arresting 53 activists. This public display of police brutality ignited a year of intense mobilisation, as the demand for gay rights exploded and media attention swayed public opinion towards law reform.

The emergence of the gay rights movement in the 1970s in response to growing civil rights movements globally.

‘For 20c you too can be blatant’

— CAMP Ink, February 1973

The rise of protest movements in the 1960s and 70s gave the button badge a new lease of life. Student unions produced and distributed badges to help people display their opinions, concerns and loyalties on a range of issues. Anti-war badges were sold in their tens of thousands to fund the Vietnam Moratorium Campaign, while gay liberation supporters used them to proudly proclaim their sexual identity or point of view. These badges carry messages of self-affirmation that reflect key moments in the social and political life of the movement and the times. For some lesbians and gay men, pinning a badge on their chest was a revolutionary act, making a very public announcement of their sexual orientation in a hostile world.

Courtesy Gabrielle Antolovich

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The Campaign Against Moral Persecution (CAMP) Inc was Australia’s first political organisation for same-sex oriented men and women. The discreet logo on membership cards and badges like this gave gay men and lesbians a subtle way of signalling their association with the group.

The Campaign Against Moral Persecution (CAMP) Inc was Australia’s first political organisation for same-sex oriented men and women. The discreet logo on membership cards and badges like this gave gay men and lesbians a subtle way of signalling their association with the group.

Sydney Gay Liberation formed in January 1972 and quickly became a key force in Australian gay rights activism. Making use of the design skills of artist and activist David McDairmid, by October Gay Lib was advertising its badges in its newsletter: ‘Tell the world you're a fag revolutionary and wear one with a smile’.

Sydney Gay Liberation formed in January 1972 and quickly became a key force in Australian gay rights activism. Making use of the design skills of artist and activist David McDairmid, by October Gay Lib was advertising its badges in its newsletter: ‘Tell the world you're a fag revolutionary and wear one with a smile’.

Following the lead of interational groups, a Sydney branch of the Radicalesbians formed in March 1973. Congregating around women-only share houses in Sydney’s inner west, this short-lived group of politically active gay women believed that if women were ever to become truly liberated, they needed to run their own lives separately from men.

Following the lead of interational groups, a Sydney branch of the Radicalesbians formed in March 1973. Congregating around women-only share houses in Sydney’s inner west, this short-lived group of politically active gay women believed that if women were ever to become truly liberated, they needed to run their own lives separately from men.

After an initial explosion of  activity, by 1973 the gay liberation movement in Australia had plateaued. To shake things up, Sydney Gay Liberation instigated Gay Pride Week, with a program of  celebrations, demonstrations, militant zaps and educational activities to encourage members of the community to ‘come out’.

After an initial explosion of  activity, by 1973 the gay liberation movement in Australia had plateaued. To shake things up, Sydney Gay Liberation instigated Gay Pride Week, with a program of  celebrations, demonstrations, militant zaps and educational activities to encourage members of the community to ‘come out’.

The downward-pointing pink or black triangle was the most-recognised international symbol of the gay rights movement in the 1970s. Used in Nazi concentration camps to identify suspected homosexual men (pink) and women (black), it was reclaimed by gay men and lesbians as a powerful expression of pride and remembrance of past oppression.

The downward-pointing pink or black triangle was the most-recognised international symbol of the gay rights movement in the 1970s. Used in Nazi concentration camps to identify suspected homosexual men (pink) and women (black), it was reclaimed by gay men and lesbians as a powerful expression of pride and remembrance of past oppression.

Revolutionary Effeminism was a short-lived political movement which emerged overseas and in Australia in 1973. Its followers believed that women’s liberation was imperative for true gay (male) liberation. They sought to transform their own behaviour and beliefs through consciousness raising and by practising solidarity with women’s struggles as part of their role in gay liberation.

Revolutionary Effeminism was a short-lived political movement which emerged overseas and in Australia in 1973. Its followers believed that women’s liberation was imperative for true gay (male) liberation. They sought to transform their own behaviour and beliefs through consciousness raising and by practising solidarity with women’s struggles as part of their role in gay liberation.

Challenging the dominant steretype, the slogan ‘How dare you presume I’m heterosexual!’ was popularised by the UK Gay Liberation Front. It appeared on the cover of the May 1976 issue of the University of Sydney's student paper Honi Soit — the first time an entire issue was ‘almost exclusively homosexual’. It was published to coincide with the Second National Homosexual Conference held in Sydney for the first time that year.

Challenging the dominant steretype, the slogan ‘How dare you presume I’m heterosexual!’ was popularised by the UK Gay Liberation Front. It appeared on the cover of the May 1976 issue of the University of Sydney's student paper Honi Soit — the first time an entire issue was ‘almost exclusively homosexual’. It was published to coincide with the Second National Homosexual Conference held in Sydney for the first time that year.

‘Stop police attacks, on gays, women, and blacks!’ was one of the powerful slogans of the 78ers — lesbian and gay rights activists who particpated in the irst Mardi Gras, part of Sydney’s Day of International Gay Solidarity on 24 June. This badge was designed for the Socialist Workers Party by black rights activist John Garcia. 

‘Stop police attacks, on gays, women, and blacks!’ was one of the powerful slogans of the 78ers — lesbian and gay rights activists who particpated in the irst Mardi Gras, part of Sydney’s Day of International Gay Solidarity on 24 June. This badge was designed for the Socialist Workers Party by black rights activist John Garcia. 

A call to arms for lesbian feminists everywhere, this iconic 70s slogan was the catchcry of lesbian liberation and found expression in many forms. Whether spray-painted on a wall, emblazoned on banners or on a fiery orange button badge, it was often paired with interlocked Venus symbols for added emphasis.

A call to arms for lesbian feminists everywhere, this iconic 70s slogan was the catchcry of lesbian liberation and found expression in many forms. Whether spray-painted on a wall, emblazoned on banners or on a fiery orange button badge, it was often paired with interlocked Venus symbols for added emphasis.

Widely distributed across Australia, Young Gay and Proud was published in 1979 as part of an International Year of the Child education campaign. The 60-page booklet responded to a vacuum of information for teenagers. With practical advice, resources and first-hand accounts of how young men and women discovered their homosexuality, it aimed to reassure teenagers they were not sick or bad and that they were not alone.  

Widely distributed across Australia, Young Gay and Proud was published in 1979 as part of an International Year of the Child education campaign. The 60-page booklet responded to a vacuum of information for teenagers. With practical advice, resources and first-hand accounts of how young men and women discovered their homosexuality, it aimed to reassure teenagers they were not sick or bad and that they were not alone.  

Courtesy Gregg Blachford

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Gay culture came to life in the 1970s, and people began to feel its pulse. When lesbians and gay men left their past lives behind in search of personal liberation and sexual freedom, Sydney became their cultural heartland.  

Artists, filmmakers, photographers and performers developed unique perspectives that sparked radical individual and collective creativity. Sydney’s Feminist Bookshop promoted women’s writing, and lesbian bands made ‘wimmin’s’ music. CAMP put on a pottery workshop, and social clubs like Gay Men’s Rap offered cultural and sporting activities. Sydney’s first weekly gay and lesbian radio program, Gay Waves, took to the air in 1979.  

The movement offered new ways to hook up: at public demonstrations, political meetings, conferences, fundraising dances and parties, bars and commercial gay venues. In the turbulent aftermath of the 78 Mardi Gras, factions in Sydney’s gay community began to unite. For many, celebration was a more potent tool than protest, and continued to attract public attention through vibrant poster art.

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Along with newsletters, flyers and manifestos, posters took messages of liberation and community to the streets. Poster-making equipment was easily put together, and large numbers of colour posters could be printed relatively cheaply. Many groups involved in the campaigns against the war in Vietnam, and in support of the women’s movement and gay liberation began to produce posters. 

View in catalogue

Revolution in the making

‘Part of the function of Gay Lib is to teach people the technical side of revolution so that within the movement the physical work isn’t just left up to a few. Everyone will within ten minutes know vaguely the basics of making posters …

‘These posters can be done in the fine arts studio on City Road next to the Wentworth Building, Sydney University. Ask for Colin [Little] and say you’re from Gay Lib. He will show you the way for the first time (eg. what “red” paper and “acid” to use) but it’s nice to have a vague notion of what you're doing.’

— Sydney Gay Liberation Newsletter, September 1972

Founded by engineering student and self-taught artist Colin Little in 1971, the Earthworks Poster Collective ran from the Tin Sheds workshops until 1979. The collective produced a significant group of posters between 1972 and Little’s death just over a decade later, collaborating with artists and activists to advance social, political and cultural change. 

Lex Watson collection

Sydney's radical drag troupe Sylvia and the Synthetics ran from October 1972 to the end of 1974. Founding members Denis Norton, Paul Hock and Morris Spinetti were regularly joined on stage by a revolving cast of outrageous characters including Doris Fish (Philip Mills) and Danny Abood, backed by legendary local vocalist Wendy Saddington. Following the lead of overseas drag acts, the Synthetics offered total theatre, with bizarre costumes and faces painted not for prettiness but to shock.

 Lex Watson collection

Sydney's radical drag troupe Sylvia and the Synthetics ran from October 1972 to the end of 1974. Founding members Denis Norton, Paul Hock and Morris Spinetti were regularly joined on stage by a revolving cast of outrageous characters including Doris Fish (Philip Mills) and Danny Abood, backed by legendary local vocalist Wendy Saddington. Following the lead of overseas drag acts, the Synthetics offered total theatre, with bizarre costumes and faces painted not for prettiness but to shock.

 Lex Watson collection

Generating change meant getting political. At the 1972 federal election, David Widdup became the first openly gay candidate to run for public office in Australia. Standing for the inner-western Sydney seat of Lowe, then held by prime minister William McMahon, Widdup polled only 218 votes. But his campaign got good media coverage with its catchy slogan 'I've got my eyes on Billy's seat' and achieved its aim of helping to raise awareness in the wider community.

Public displays of homosexuality and celebration of gay and lesbian culture in Sydney were key political tactics used to campaign for the right to be visible. This poster was designed by radical sexual and political agitprop artist activist David McDiarmid. Dances organised by Lesbian and Gay Liberations groups in the 1970s generated funds to cover rent and support other activities like publishing.

Lesbian and gay political groups offered safe meeting places. From the early 1970s, Sydney's inner west became a hub of lesbian and gay political activism, with regular meetings and debates, fundraising dances at the Glebe and Balmain town halls, and CAMP Inc's weekly parties in its Balmain clubrooms.

Responding to a surge of interest in women's literature, June James and Julia Sugden threw in $1000 each to open a bookshop in a small rented shop at 204 Rowe Street, Eastwood, in 1974. It was the first shop in Australia to sell only women's and feminist texts. When Sugden moved to Balmain, she opened a second shop at Rowntree Street in 1977. More than three decades later, having moved to Lilyfield in 1982, the Feminist Bookshop still trades.

Featuring the 'coming out' butterfly (symbolising transformation or metamorphosis), the poster for the 1978 Day of International Gay Solidarity emphasises the political nature of the event that culminated in Sydney's first Mardi Gras parade.

 Robert French collection

Featuring the 'coming out' butterfly (symbolising transformation or metamorphosis), the poster for the 1978 Day of International Gay Solidarity emphasises the political nature of the event that culminated in Sydney's first Mardi Gras parade.

 Robert French collection

— Dennis Altman, Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation, quoting a gay liberation pamphlet

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‘I find it hard to express the bewilderment, the conflict and the anxiety that overshadowed my late adolescence, as I realised how different, how unacceptable, was my own pattern of loving, and yet how real it was.’

— Sydney librarian and CAMP member Joyce Geake, 1973

The public campaigns waged through the 1970s began the process of shifting public opinion and understanding. Central to their success was the act of coming out — openly admitting same-sex attraction. Yet in a society still dominated by hostility and discrimination, this public act often came with intense inner anxiety, conflict and self-doubt. The private work of accepting your true self was often as difficult as the public work of changing a hostile world. 

The personal stories and testimonies of this process, in diaries, letters, interviews and other accounts, also became — and continue to be — powerful strategies for advancing acceptance, both personally and politically. 

After qualifying as a social worker in the late 1940s, Joyce Geake spent most of her career working as a librarian. In the 1950s she consulted a psychiatrist about her same-sex desires, and spent nine months in therapy in England to no avail. She travelled to Europe in 1972 to study counselling services that helped same-sex oriented people accept their sexuality. The following year, in her 50s, she recorded her research and personal experience of growing up as a lesbian in a manuscript she hoped would address common misconceptions about homosexuality. 

‘This book would have been written a good deal sooner, except that I felt it best to wait until any of my family who could have been distressed by it were no longer in so vulnerable a position.’

— Joyce Geake, preface to ‘Shadow and Substance’, 1973

‘To begin with perhaps I should stress how spontaneously I first became aware of my depth of affection for other women. I was still an adolescent, and contrary to most popular ideas, I was neither seduced by anyone older than myself, nor in a position to choose what of pattern of loving I wished to follow — it had never occurred to me that I would not follow the usual one.'

'I had never heard of homosexuality at the time I first fell in love and so far as I can remember, I had no knowledge of its existence as an emotional pattern of life. I can remember now, thirty years later, the joys and sorrows of the completely overwhelming love I felt, and how very hard it was to try not to show it, and to talk about it.’

— Joyce Geake, ‘Shadow and Substance’, 1973

Geake’s manuscript was never published but it is now digitised and can be read in full in the Library’s catalogue.

High-school student and activist John Englart started keeping a diary in 1970 when he was 15. In the same year he moved from Tweed Heads in northern NSW to Sydney and found that his diary became increasingly important as he adjusted to city life. ‘I was feeling quite outside,’ he remembers, ‘it provided a place where I could put my feelings down, it offered a place for reflection.’ In September 1973 Englart took part in Gay Pride Week, Australia’s first nationally coordinated gay rights event and the biggest to date. In his diary, he writes about his excitement at taking part in the event, and his own ‘coming out’. 

John Englart recently donated his diary to the Library, along with 89 black-and-white photographs he snapped on his Instamatic camera. Together they give us a vivid, first-hand account of his growing political and self-awareness, and a rare teenage perspective on this socially and personally formative period.

‘I have come out’

‘This is GAY PRIDE WEEK, I have come out. Yesterday (Sunday) and today I participated in Gay Lib rallies — each had its own spontaneity. Today’s Gay outrage in Martin Plaza was eventful in its own way … We marched shoulder to shoulder arms around each other to the cenotaph and back chanting — all the people looking at us. It is then I realized how hard it must be for some people to come out — with all that hostility in society.’

— diary of John Englart, 10 September 1973

‘They call us queens; the women lezzos and the men poofters. They try to insult us with these words, but we’re not easily put down. Most books say bad things about us, but then we didn’t write them. We wrote this one to try to even things up a bit.’

— Young, Gay and Proud, 1979

Exhibition co-curator Bruce Carter recalls:

When I was 14, I found Young, Gay and Proud on the shelves of the Intervention Bookshop in Sydney’s Haymarket. It was 1979 and although there was a growing acceptance of gay men and women, discrimination was still everywhere. It was risky to admit openly to your gayness. Fear of being ‘outed’ was commonplace, with the lives of countless gay people older than me still being ruined. Sydney may have had a blossoming gay social scene, but its existence to teenagers like me was distant. 

With its central message ‘You are not alone and you are normal’, the book broke-down the isolation and doubt that bedevilled my 14-year-old self. In its pages lay stories that helped me make sense. Its writers challenged popular stereotypes and refuted stigma. I felt the book had been written by friends. I had found something written by people like me, for people like me. This set it apart. My feelings were validated. That brought relief.  

As I look through a copy of Young, Gay and Proud 40 years later, I’m struck by how much the book still holds up. Its body and sex positive messages written in insider language are still relevant. It is sobering to read the section on the law and dealing with the police, knowing that in many ways we have moved on. Graphics and lines not seen or read in decades are instantly familiar. ‘There’s no reason why we should have to run away or hide because we’re gay’, an opening page proclaims.  

I’m so glad that all those years ago I found Young, Gay and Proud. Not long after, I discovered the Gay Waves radio program on 2SER and heard Tom Robinson sing his iconic anthem ‘Glad to be Gay’; I would tune-in Thursday nights from my bedroom. I came out to a teacher at school, and to my best friend. Life changed. Young, Gay and Proud lived up to its name. 

— Dennis Altman, Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation, 1971 

Credit

An exploration of how a multimedia text represents personal and public worlds.