As Sydney breaks into historic Mardi Gras celebrations, history of a different kind is being made by a special commission inquiry into LGBTQI hate crimes.
On Friday, the inquiry probed the 1985 disappearance of 27-year-old French national Gilles Mattaini, who at the time shared a unit with his partner Jacques Musy in Bondi.
The pair met in Paris in 1978 and were happy working and living together in Australia for seven years, Mr Musy told a coronial inquest in 2002.
"I would go surfing myself on a daily basis and he would walk," Mr Musy said.
"He would never walk outside without a walkman and stroll around the seaside and look at the ocean and dream away. He was very shy, but very joyful.
"He was somebody who was really enjoying life fully for everything - like the sun, the light, the food."
Mr Mattaini disappeared in September 1985 in the vicinity of Marks Park in Bondi, which later became known as an epicentre of homophobic violence.
Despite this, in 2015 a specialised NSW Police task force presented suicide as a more likely conclusion than homicide in Mr Mattaini's death, partly by including inaccurate and misleading evidence, the inquiry was told by counsel assisting Peter Gray SC on Friday.
Strike Force Neiwand was established in 2015 to probe the disappearances of Mr Mattaini, as well as Ross Warren and John Russell who were also found by the coroner in 2005 to be likely victims of gay hate crimes in South Bondi.
Two previous suicide attempts by Mr Mattaini, the first when he was under 20, and the second after he was forcibly conscripted to the French Army shortly after he met Mr Musy, were scrutinised both by police and the coroner.
Evidence of the suicide attempts was given far more weight by Neiwand, to the point its investigation supervisor Detective Sergeant Steve Morgan accused previous investigators of withholding evidence from the coroner that supported the suicide theory.
Explanations for Mr Mattaini's suicide attempts were told to the inquiry on Friday, including that he was very young and struggling with reactions to his sexuality at the time of the first attempt. The inquiry was told that with his second attempt, he may have been trying to get discharged from the army.
Mr Gray argued a summary of Neiwand's investigation focused "overwhelmingly on suicide" and did not include evidence by Mr Musy that his partner had not expressed any suicidal thoughts for at least seven years.
"He was commenting often that he was really happy and how stupid he had been before to sort of want to die because there was much more to life than what he thought there was," Mr Musy told the coroner.
"That doesn't seem to get much of a mention in your Neiwand summary, does it, how joyful and happy he was?" Mr Gray asked Mr Morgan under examination on Friday.
"No, I don't recall it being in the summary," he replied.
"That's disregarding evidence that was inconsistent with suicide isn't it?" Mr Gray asked.
"I certainly don't believe it was deliberately done," Mr Morgan said.
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