Nightlife
“Out of the bars, into the streets”: The story of Sydney’s first Mardi Gras
In the first episode of If These Walls Could Talk, Red Bull’s new five part podcast, we explore the origins of Sydney's Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.
If These Walls Could Talk is Red Bull’s new five part podcast about the venues, parties and people that shaped Sydney’s nightlife. This season we focus on the city’s LGBTQI party scene, and everything that came together to make it the nocturnal destination it is today. This article is adapted from episode one of If These Walls Could Talk. To hear the full story, listen wherever you get your podcasts.
On June 24, 1978, Sydney’s gay and lesbian community mobilised. During the day, a few hundred activists attended a rally in the city to mark nine years since the Stonewall riots, a history-making series of gay and lesbian demonstrations that had happened nine years earlier in the United States. At night, though, they headed east.
Just after 10pm, in the middle of winter, people started arriving in Taylor Square. Eventually the crowd reached two or three hundred strong and began marching to Oxford Street, the strip of the city known for its gay bars and underground clubs. Some were dressed in heavy make-up or costumes -- as cowgirls, or the Pope -- others just rugged up for the cold. They called it Mardi Gras.
“As we marched down Oxford Street, some people joined in because we were chanting 'out of the bars and into the streets,'” recalls Robyn Kennedy, one member of the group -- now known as the 78ers -- who marched that night.
“As we marched down Oxford Street, some people joined in because we were chanting 'out of the bars and into the streets'"
Today, Sydney’s Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras a festive, weeklong extravaganza that encompasses parties, balls, films and a parade attended by some 200,000 onlookers. But if it wasn’t for that night in 1978, this city’s Mardi Gras wouldn’t exist.
In the mid-1970s, there were huge personal risks to being openly gay. In New South Wales, male homosexuality was still a crime, and it was legal to discriminate against a person because of their sexuality. Police were hostile to the LGBTQI community and regularly demanded payoffs from gay bars.
The march on that day in 1978 started with a letter that gay and lesbian activists in San Francisco sent to their overseas counterparts, calling for a show of solidarity on the anniversary of the Stonewall riots. Two organisations in Sydney -- CAMP, the Campaign Against Moral Persecution, and the Gay Solidarity Group -- responded to the call, deciding to march by day and hold a party at night.
There was a pragmatic motivation behind the party. Not everyone felt comfortable marching in the light of day, where that exposure could result in losing your job or being evicted from your home. The hope was that the cover of night -- as well as make-up and costumes -- would allow more people to join in.
While this was the first year they added a party, gay and lesbian activists had marched through the city before. The rally in 1978 felt like their best yet.
“By our standards, it was a very successful march because we had about five hundred people, which was a lot more than we usually got,” Kennedy remembers.
“I think anyone from the time will tell you that they'd been so lonely. But when they're finally able to meet kindred spirits, it changed everything and you suddenly found all of this confidence. And so in a march, it was just totally exhilarating to be with so many people like you, who wanted to change society, who wanted equality and were sick of the oppression and discrimination. I mean, at the time homosexuality was still classified as a mental illness.”
Robyn Kennedy, one of the 78ers who marched in the first ever Mardi Gras
© Ken Leanfore
As well as building their own community, it was a way to remind the rest of the world that queer people existed.
“It's very much about visibility and letting people see who we are,” Kennedy says. “We didn't have two heads. We looked normal. We did the same things as everybody else. We had families. We weren't a rarity. So visibility was very important, as it still is.”
The success of the march put the crowd in high spirits for what was to come at night.
At 11pm, the crowd began to march, following a truck driven by a gay man named Lance Gowland. It blasted two songs on repeat -- ‘Glad to Be Gay’ and ‘Ode to a Gym Teacher’. Marchers danced to the music and chanted refrains like “out of the bars and into the streets!”, “stop police attacks on gays, women and blacks!” and “ho ho ho homosexual!”
“People were really having a good time until we got to Hyde Park,” Kennedy recalls. But quickly the police began to intervene, despite the group having secured the permit they needed to march.
“They were really harassing Lance, who was driving the truck that was playing songs to go faster, go faster. But he wouldn't, of course, and people wouldn't go faster. We just took our time but, so that got them even more pissed off, I suppose. So when we got to Hyde Park is when things went bad. The police confiscated the truck and dragged Lance out.”
“They were ruining our party,” Kennedy says. “So it was then that the cry went up 'up to the Cross!' So we all tore up William Street and into Darlinghurst Road and to the El Alamein fountain. Meanwhile the police had really organised themselves, and when we got there, there were just countless paddy wagons and police who weren't wearing their ID badges and couldn't be identified. We sort of laughed at them really to start with, like, what're you gonna do? And people actually start to disperse because it was, well, we're here, nothing's happening. We've had a good night, let's go. But it was then that the police started laying to people when we were actually leaving. It was pretty ugly and horrible, but we fought back.”
53 of the marchers were arrested. At Darlinghurst Police Station, some were beaten up.
In 2016, the New South Wales police apologised to the 78ers for the way the first Mardi Gras was policed. But that night marked a turning point -- where before the LGBTQI community had been divided, now it came together. The community also began to receive public support from the likes of left leaning organisations, civil liberties groups from the women's movement, the more accepting churches and the trade union movement.
When charges were laid against the Mardi Gras protestors there was a huge demonstration at the court, and more were arrested. The group staged more marches to protest the charges, which were eventually dismissed.
“I don't think we ever could have imagined the sequence of events and the outcomes from that or that the Mardi Gras would still be here,” says Kennedy. “That first Mardi Gras, it was a one-off for us, it was a fun party, a little bit different to our normal protests. But had not those events occurred, they would not have been another Mardi Gras parade because there was a lot of opposition from within our own community to having the second one in ‘79. But how could we not, after what happened at the first?”
Mardi Gras has morphed many times in the years since then.
“The second one we had was pretty similar to the first, I suppose it was much more political. And then over time, you know, then the costumes started to come in, and the floats. And so people in these shopfronts would have seen it evolve over time from a pretty small group of people trying to achieve some basic human rights to this amazing celebration that is known the world over.”
Mardi Gras 1988 poster
© Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences
The parade eventually moved away from the middle of winter. “After a few years we thought, oh, stuff this, let's move it to summer. It's too cold,” Kennedy says. “And it is much better in summer because, you know, people can wear skimpy outfits and stuff.”
The most important part of Mardi Gras, though, has always been the message it sends.
“I think celebration is really important because it's self affirming,” Kennedy reflects. “There's many parts of our communities that are really still struggling, like kids in rural areas or people growing up in traditional religious families. The celebratory aspect is really important for them -- to see everybody partying in the parade, it can be life changing, because it's affirming for them of who they are. And they can see that it's okay. “
“So I think that's a really important role, to have that celebratory aspect and nightlife,” she says. “It's part of sharing joy, of who we are and acceptance… That's part of community.”
Red Bull is an official partner of Sydney Gay And Lesbian Mardi Gras.
If These Walls Could Talk is Red Bull’s new five part podcast about the venues, parties and people that shaped Sydney’s nightlife. This season we focus on the city’s LGBTQI party scene, and everything that came together to make it the nocturnal destination it is today.
This article is adapted from episode one of If These Walls Could Talk. To hear the full story, listen wherever you get your podcasts.