2019 Spring Edition
NEWSLETTER
From the 2019/20 committee
Dear PHG members (past and present), community partners and friends,
Our next general meeting will be on Monday 18 November 2019 at 6.30pm at St. Helen's Community Centre, 184 Glebe Pt Rd, Glebe. Come and join us as we wrap up and celebrate a great year.
What's been happening?
2019 Planning meeting
On 29 September the committee and some of our members met at Benledi to discuss ideas and projects for the next twelve months. As well as continuing our ongoing projects we decided to:
expand our collection of oral history interviews and enhance the diversity of the collection including interviews with bisexual, transgender, women, and people of colour
increase regional outreach and connection; and
investigate the possibility of involvement in a major event late next year - watch this space!
We’ll keep you in the loop on all of these things as they develop.
L to R: Shirleene Robinson, Helen Caple, Scott McKinnon, John Witte, Kim Kemmis, Robert French, Trevor Pritchard
Parramatta Pride
Parramatta Pride Picnic at River Foreshore Reserve on Sunday 10 November was a huge success, with brilliant sunny weather and a big crowd. Our PHG volunteers spoke to lots of people about LGBTIQ history. Welcome to everyone who joined us!
We've been winning...
We congratulate Robert French on receiving the President’s Award, with Julie McCrossan AM, in the ACON 2019 Honours Awards on 2 October. Some of Robert’s many achievements in the community are noted here
We’re also thrilled that our secretary Dr Sophie Robinson has been made the 2020 Nancy Keesing Fellow by the State Library of New South Wales. The fellowship allows Sophie to use the Library’s collections in her project Lesbian Sydney in the 1990s, which will explore Sydney’s emerging lesbian sub-culture as it became increasingly politically active and organised, drawing on the Library’s Lesbian and Gay archives and two key publications of the time, Lesbians on the Loose and Wicked Women.
... and talking...
Our committee members have been speaking at conferences and other events. In September vice-president Scott McKinnon gave the annual lecture for Oral History NSW as part of History Week 2019. In October he travelled to Brisbane for the 2019 Biennial Conference of Oral History Australia Intimate Stories, Challenging Histories. At both these events Scott presented on his recent work interviewing ACT residents who went through the 2003 Canberra bushfires. Our president Shirleene Robinson also spoke at this conference about her experience conducting interviews for her book with Alex Greenwich Yes Yes Yes: Australia’s Journey to Marriage Equality, and how her involvement in the campaign for marriage equality and her personal relationships with many of her interview subjects gave her an ‘insider’ position unusual for oral historians.
Later in October Shirleene travelled to Salt Lake City for the (American) Oral History Annual meeting, where she spoke on the National Library of Australia’s Australian response to AIDS oral history project which began in 1992.
We will also be represented at Before Mardi Gras: Gay+ in the 1970s, the 2019 Homosexual Histories Conference at the Australian National University on 15 and 16 November, with Robert French, Sophie Robinson and Scott McKinnon all giving papers. Graham Willett’s latest book, ACTing Out, on Canberra’s queer history, will be launched at the conference. We’ll have a report in our next newsletter early next year.
... and asking questions.
Several members were involved in an oral history project in conjunction with the University of Wollongong and the City of Sydney. Scott interviewed Johnny Allen about cabaret at Palms in Darlinghurst, and Sophie interviewed DJ Feisty and DJ Sveta. These interviews will be held in the oral history collection of the City of Sydney Library here.
In October Kim Kemmis and Trevor Pritchard interviewed Steve Ostrow for PHG. Steve founded the legendary Continental Baths in New York City, which not only provided a social centre for queer men from 1968-75 but also gave big breaks to Bette Midler and Barry Manilow. After moving to Sydney in the 1980s he then founded Mature Age Gays. After processing the interview will be placed in the oral history collection and be accessible for listening and research.
Coming Up
Transgender Day of Remembrance
On Wednesday 20 November a Candlelight Vigil will be held from 6.30pm at Harmony Park, Surry Hills, to remember and honour all those who have suffered violence as a result of transphobia.
It’s a free event, and light refreshments will be provided. This year is the twentieth anniversary of the Transgender Day of Remembrance, which was first held in 1999 to honour the memory of Rita Hester, a transgender woman murdered in Boston in 1998. This article from 2017 tells the story.
University of Newcastle Marriage Equality exhibition
The University of Newcastle is working on an exhibition on marriage equality. If you have any with local Newcastle content from the postal survey that you’d like to share, John Witte would love to hear from you—you can contact him at info@pridehistory.org.au
Some items of interest
Podcasts
COUNTING OUR DEAD
Where are Australia’s missing transgender dead? While preparing for this years Transgender Day of Remembrance, Eloise Brook could find only three trans and gender diverse who officially died by violence since 1999. Really? This podcast examines the way in which the violent deaths of transgender and gender diverse deaths have been obscured in the public memory and record, and how their stories have fallen through the cracks.
Trigger warning: talks about violence, murder, suicide and discrimination.
Presented by the NSW Gender Centre here
Making Gay History
In the late 1980s Eric Marcus interviewed many of the major figures in the American LGBTQ rights movement from the 1950s into the ‘80s. for his book Making Gay History. Now in its sixth season this podcast tells the story of those struggles using the voices of Sylvia Rivera, Marsha P Johnson, Frank Kameny, Evelyn Hooker, Barbara Gittings and Kay Lahusen, Phyllis Lyons and Del Martin, Larry Kramer, Bayard Rustin and many more. A great podcast, with a great website to accompany it, here.
And don't forget our website!
A big thank you to everyone who has checked out our new website. We’ve added digitised copies of two publications of the 1970s:
Gay Trade Unionist, the newsletter of the Gay Trade Unionists’ Group from 1978 to 1980
Red and Lavender, the newsletter of the Socialist Lesbians/Male Homosexuals, Sydney from 1976 to 1978
Keep an eye out as we put up new material.
Do you want to help?
Members are always busy on a number of projects. Do you want to get involved?
We can always use some help:
log oral history interviews
chase up permissions to publish interviews
scan photographs and posters
work on our Decades of Pride timeline.
Or do you have your own initiative you're wanting to work on? Get in contact!
Our general email address is info@pridehistory.org.au.
Become a member of Pride History Group and get involved today!