By Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras
From 1978 to today, this is our Mardi Gras story.
Mardi Gras is one of Australia’s most famous and well-loved events, bringing tens of thousands of visitors to Sydney to join in the celebrations. It all began on a chilly winter's night in 1978, when the police descended on a street festival bravely celebrating gay rights when homosexuality was still illegal.
This timeline reveals over four decades of Mardi Gras passion, protests and pride - with each year’s heroic moments creating Australia's unique life-affirming kaleidoscope of LGBTQIA+ self-expression.
24 June 1978 Protest (1978-06-24) by Campaign magazine, courtesy Australian Lesbian & Gay ArchivesSydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras
SATURDAY 24 JUNE 1978
Sydney's newly-formed Gay Solidarity Group developed a day of events culminating in the first Mardi Gras street festival. They intended to raise local issues such as decriminalisation of homosexuality, mark the anniversary of the Stonewall uprising in New York, protest the Australian visit of homophobic Festival of Light campaigner Mary Whitehouse, and promote the forthcoming 4th National Homosexual Conference.
1978 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Poster (1978) by Chris JonesSydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras
The first Mardi Gras march ended in violence, but the police crackdown fired up a community who would no longer be silent.
On Saturday 24 June 1978 at 10pm, several hundred gay and lesbian people and their supporters – some in fancy dress and some simply rugged up against the cold – gathered at Taylor Square and followed a truck with a small music and sound system down Oxford Street to Hyde Park.
"Out of the bars and into the streets!” they yelled. “Stop police attacks on gays, women and blacks!”
As more revellers joined in along the route, the police harassed the lead float. Then when the march stopped in Hyde Park, police confiscated the lead float truck and arrested the driver Lance Gowland.
Angered by this, 1,500 revellers diverted up William Street to Darlinghurst Road in Kings Cross, where the police swooped and violently arrested 53 men and women, many of whom were beaten in cells at Darlinghurst Police Station.
Peter Murphy remembering Sydney's First Mardi Gras (2016-09-07) by William BroughamSydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras