As a child growing up in Sydney’s Maroubra in the late 1940s, I remember “going into town” with my mother. When we went shopping, walking past Hyde Park to David Jones, Farmers or Beard Watson, my mother always wore a hat and gloves. One needed the right attire for the high street.
But it was the Darlinghurst department stores I looked forward to the most. Buckingham’s, Edward Arnold’s and Winns’ – so different from my quiet suburban life and brimming with haberdashery, appliances and fine foods. These early visits began my love affair with Darlinghurst.
When I was a teenager, our class was treated to excursions to the Australian Museum, a wonderfully grand and musty old building. As our tram rattled up Oxford Street, I would peek out the window, taking in the passersby, the elegant buildings, the small cars that zipped along the road. Darlinghurst was alive and I longed to be part of it.
In my 20s my friends and I would make the pilgrimage to the smoky bars of Oxford Street. My favourite was Martin’s Bar, opposite Darlinghurst court house. We sipped chardonnay to the sounds of cool jazz, while Martin himself sat at the end of the bar, calmly eyeing proceedings.
In the late 1960s Oxford Street took on a new ambience. It became home to the camp culture that was fleeing Kings Cross, with clubs such as Capriccio’s and Ivy’s Birdcage and bars such as Tropicana and Flo’s Palace forming part of the so-called “golden mile”. My social life increasingly revolved around these establishments as well as some sex-on-premises venues including the Barracks and Pleasure Chest, which were important for a young suburban gay man seeking to sow his wild oats.
A new world was opening up for me. But our “gay ghetto”, as my friends and I fondly referred to Darlinghurst, was so much more than a place to meet someone on a Saturday night, though perhaps we didn’t realise it at the time.
It was here, of course, on Oxford Street that the first Mardi Gras took place on 24 June 1978.
About 10pm a crowd of several hundred gathered at Taylor Square and we marched along Oxford Street to Tom Robinson Band’s Glad to Be Gay. By the time we reached the end of the street, people had come out of the bars to join the march and the crowd had grown. We were confronted by police, with some 53 protesters arrested, and many physically assaulted. Thankfully some friends and I took refuge in the Exchange Hotel and missed the more violent scuffles that took place later that evening.
The encounter wasn’t enough to deter us from our beloved strip and I often found myself travelling to Darlinghurst to enjoy the suburb’s other cultural attractions: the Sydney Filmmakers Co-op in St Peters Lane, or Garibaldi’s, a restaurant above a garage. There was no shortage of entertainment. You could catch a film at the Verona Cinema and afterwards wander down to French’s Tavern for live music.
Then the Aids epidemic happened. By late 1982 local newspapers ran death notices on the friends we had lost. The community rallied together, handing out material about “safe sex” in bars and saunas.
Darlinghurst was no longer our safe haven and we held rallies and demonstrations in Green Park, near the Gay and Lesbian Holocaust Memorial. Across the road is St Vincent’s hospital, where Ward 17 South housed many of the city’s first HIV/Aids patients. Nearby was the Sacred Heart hospice, the last home for many gay men before they died from the illness. I remember leaving Green Park for those solemn walks down to the candlelight rallies in Hyde Park, pausing at the hospice to say hello to friends on the balcony.
One day, in the early 90s, driving from Redfern where I was living, it dawned on me. I was in love with Darlinghurst. It was a place of the imagination, so full of diversity and attractions. How could I have been so blind to what was a slowly evolving love affair? And, as an academic, what else could I do to express my love than through writing? I began work on a book, the first of many projects exploring gay life in Darlinghurst.
So I moved to Darlinghurst, into a terrace house on Little West Street. Everything I needed was nearby and I availed myself of a local gym, and many eateries on Victoria and Stanley streets.
A decade later I moved to an apartment on Oxford Street, on the very site where that old department store, Winns, once stood. And – it was destiny of course – soon after, at the traffic lights outside my building, I met my partner. He literally was the boy next door, living in the apartment block beside mine. We had made eye contact a few times over the previous months, he on his way to work, me going to the newsagent; then, one day, as the saying goes, we “picked each other up”.
And now, standing on my balcony at night, looking out over the suburb I know so well, I’m glad that I listened to Darlinghurst’s siren song. I’m happy. I’m home. I just wonder why it took me so long to make my way here.
Garry Wotherspoon is a contributing author in My Darlinghurst, edited by Anna Clark, Tamson Pietsch and Gabrielle Kemmis, available now through New South (RRP $49.99).
