The collaborative effort of five Australians for the rights of the LGBTIQ+ community

Share and Follow

This article contains references to suicide.

Jeremy Fisher had to walk past the door of his university’s Gay Liberation Club several times before he had the courage to knock and enter.

Back in 1973, he was scared of being ‘outed’ for his sexuality but brave enough to seek out people like him within Sydney’s gay community, who largely kept their identities private.

A black and white photo of a man with long hair looking to the right

Jeremy Fisher in 1974. Source: Supplied

The then 18-year-old had been excited to move from his small NSW northern rivers town of Kyogle to the big smoke and explore what college life had to offer. He was also excited and curious to meet men.

But things became “grim” for him that year.

Now in his 80s, Fisher recalls how he recovered from a horrific assault and suicide attempt as a young man to live a life of “quiet” activism — always out, visible and true to himself.

As SBS marks 50 years of storytelling, here are five stories of LGBTIQ+ Australians who have lived through historic changes in that time.

Australia: An Unofficial History

Degradation to defiance

Recounting his first year of study at Sydney’s Macquarie University, Fisher tells SBS News how his excitement for city life quickly dissipated.

“I’d been going into the city to different gay bars and stuff, and I’d met a guy there who essentially sexually assaulted me. Well, not essentially — he did,” he says.

“And this left me feeling depressed, thinking that things were wrong and I shouldn’t be living this sort of life.

I attempted to take my own life in that room.

Fisher was found alone in his dorm room by a cleaner and taken to hospital where he was nursed back to health.

But the Anglican-run Robert Menzies College at Macquarie University wouldn’t allow him to return unless he agreed to be celibate and renounce homosexuality.

“I didn’t see that as being particularly what I wanted to do,” Fisher says.

A black and white photo of a smiling teenager at a desk, holding a pen. He sits in front of a map and is wearing a dark jacket, jumper and tie.

Jeremy Fisher in high school in 1969. He was yet to move to Sydney and discover the city’s gay community.

Instead, he formed an unlikely alliance with tradies working on the college’s construction site, who voted to protest Fisher’s treatment by stopping work.

“When it was put to them that there was a guy who’s been unfairly kicked out of the college just because of his sexuality they went ‘well, that’s not fair. That’s not a good idea’.

“And so they supported it, which was remarkable.”

But Fisher says the pink ban in some ways “wasn’t really a win” because the college’s administration still refused to let him return and would not refund his rental bond.

Nevertheless, he’s proud that “an awful lot of fuss was kicked up in terms of this being the first industrial action in support of gay rights”.

A black and white image of a man with his arm around another man's waist, holding hands. They are in a crowd of people with their backs to the camera.

Jeremy Fisher (pictured centre right) at a gay rights demonstration in 1974. He was part of a group of gay activists performing ‘zaps’: kissing in public as a form of protest. Source: Supplied / Jeremy Fisher

During his time at uni, Fisher and the 10 or so other members of the Macquarie University Gay Liberation Club would also engage in public acts of defiance and gay pride, known as ‘zaps’.

“We’d go on a bus and kiss and cuddle, which would provoke various reactions from people, but the point was to try and make ourselves visible and make people realise that we were there,” he explains.

“There were other groups that were more, let’s say, respectable. And we were not respectable at all.”

‘Worthy of just being’

After university, Fisher became more settled and focused on work.

He graduated in 1976 with an education degree but the state had too many teachers and instead he landed a job at the Medical Journal of Australia. It launched his near-five-decade career in publishing and editing, for which he won an Order of Australia medal in 2017.

He jokes he hasn’t won an Order of Australia medal for being gay yet.

A man sitting at an outside table that is covered in a rainbow flag, with four closed books on it. He is signing a fifth book.

For Fisher and his partner of 37 years, “activism has been really just living our life openly and ensuring that people are aware of who and what we’re about”. Source: Supplied

But life became dark again for a time in the 1980s when Australia and the world were in the grip of the AIDS crisis. Gay men were dying in the thousands from the brutal sexually-transmitted disease. At the time, homosexuality was still illegal in NSW, where Fisher lived, as it was in Queensland, WA and Tasmania.

“There were many, many, many friends who were just gone. You were going to funerals constantly,” he recalls.

“I’ll look at some photos and I’ll go: ‘oh, all of those people are dead.'”

He says living through that experience is “just one of those things that you don’t quite get over”.

Having lost so many close friends over the years, Fisher counts himself lucky, adding that he would have missed out on “a terrific life doing lots of things”, had he not been given a second chance.

“At one point I tried to take my own life. But I don’t feel bad about myself at all because of my sexuality. And if people do then they’ve got to get some help to be able to see that they’re worthy of just being.”

A closeup shot of two men smiling and wearing pink sashes

For Fisher and his partner of 37 years, “activism has been really just living our life openly and ensuring that people are aware of who and what we’re about”. Source: Supplied

Putting politics back in the parade

Sallie Colechin realised she was a lesbian around 50 years ago when she fell in with a group of feminists.

The photographer says her teenage years were pretty typical but attending her first International Women’s Day March in Sydney in 1975 opened her up to an exciting new world.

A selfie of a woman in a purple shirt with black glasses

Sallie Colechin co-organised the first Mardi Gras in 1978. Source: Supplied

“We then went to a dinner that night with a bunch of feminist women in Annandale [in Sydney’s inner-west] and we heard about the Amazon Acres Women’s Mountain Farm.

“We thought, oh, we have to go and visit there, which we did in my Mini Cooper about three times that year, and I started to realise that I was attracted to women,” she says.

The female-only farm in northern NSW, with its policy of “no men, no meat and no machines”, exposed Colechin to ideas that were much more radical than she was learning at school.

A black and white photo of people marching down Sydney's Oxford Street with gay rights banners. Two people at the front hold a large banner reading: "International gay solidarity".

The first Mardi Gras parade in Sydney was organised in solidarity with gay rights groups in the US. Source: AAP

After she graduated in 1976, Colechin and her first girlfriend joined the organising collective for the fourth National Homosexual Conference in Sydney and the Gay Solidarity Group, which organised Australia’s first Mardi Gras on 24 June 1978.

They had no idea the day would turn into a riot.

“We organised a morning march through the streets of Sydney to talk about the fact that we didn’t have a right at work to be out and an afternoon talking forum at Paddington Town Hall, where we could have politicians and lawyers talk about the fact that it was still illegal for men to be open about their sexuality.”

A balck and white photo of people marching and holding up signs with gay rights messages

The first Mardi Gras in 1978 turned into a riot. Credit: Australian Lesbian and Gay archives

In the evening, they planned to have a celebratory dance down the street and encourage people to join them.

With a little trepidation, the group started walking down Oxford Street and calling for people to come “out of the bars and onto the streets” — and many did.

A black and white photo of women in a crowd. The one on the left is holding a placard

Sallie Colechin (left) says she would have been arrested, had her girlfriend not held her back at the first Mardi Gras in 1978. Source: Supplied / Sallie Colechin

The parade numbered around 1,000 LGBTIQ+ people and allies.

Colechin says they had a permit to march through Hyde Park, but when they got there, police wouldn’t allow the demonstration to continue and started arresting and beating people.

“If my girlfriend hadn’t kept me in a shop window alcove, I’m sure I would’ve been arrested because I felt very angry and very concerned about the way people were being arrested — there was no way to identify the police involved.

“People being thrown against paddy wagons was absolutely frightening.”

A black and white photo depicting dozens of police officers outside a police station in the 1970s.

Gay rights activists and police outside the Darlinghurst police station following the charging of participants in the 1978 Sydney gay rights parade. Source: Supplied / Robert French

That night 53 people were arrested. Many had their names, addresses and professions published by the media over the following days. Many lost their jobs as a result, while others, heavy with the shame and terror of being outed, took their own lives.

Colechin and a group of others collected money to bail out their friends.

“In those days, there were no mobile phones, no [ATMs] to take money out. So we had to collect money from people’s houses — from kitty money, from rent money — to make everyone’s bail,” she says.

Reflecting nearly 50 years later, Colechin says in some ways the experience was “incredibly unifying”.

“We’d come as a community. Lesbians and gay men didn’t necessarily interact a lot, maybe occasionally in the bars, but because of that riot, we really came together and supported each other for those next few months.

It was an incredible period of time, and I feel incredibly proud to have been part of it.

But the community feeling didn’t necessarily last for Colechin, who began to distance herself from the annual Mardi Gras parade because she felt it was becoming commercialised.

“When I became involved again and organised a protest for the 20th anniversary, a lot of people said to us that we brought the politics back into the parade.

A black and white photo of people walking through Sydney's CBD in the 1970s. At the front people hold a large banner reading Lesbians Ignite

A rally was held on July 15th, following the first Mardi Gras, demanding police drop the charges they laid against Mardi Gras demonstrators. Credit: Colechin Photo Imaging

‘They were surprised I was beautiful’

Katherine Wolfgramme says she was an extremely effeminate child.

When she announced to her family that she was transitioning from a man to a woman, they weren’t surprised, but they were shocked she looked pretty as a girl.

A close up shot of a woman with makeup, earrings and a necklace

Katherine Wolfgramme in the 90s. She made history as the first transgender person in Fiji to change their name on their birth certificate. Source: Supplied

Born in Fiji in 1972, Wolfgramme moved to Australia with her family when she was two years old.

As a child, she was punished for expressing her true gender identity.

“Every fibre of my body believed I was a girl,” she says.

“I was told if I transitioned, I would be ugly, I would end up [on] the streets, I would always be alone, no one would love me.

“But the need to transition was so great that it would not have mattered to me what I Iooked like. I wouldn’t have cared if I looked like a truck driver.”

She started to live as Katherine from the age of 18 and moved from the family home into a squat in the centre of Melbourne.

A portrait shot of a woman wearing a big crystal necklace and green and red dress

Katherine Wolfgramme modelling in 1999. Source: Supplied

In 1990, a trip to Sydney for the annual Sleaze Ball — an elaborate queer party that was one of the main fundraisers for the Mardi Gras parade — would prove formative and encourage her to become involved in transgender advocacy and visibility, which she has spent the last 35 years active in.

“It was the first time I’d actually seen transgender women dining openly and feeling safe and comfortable to be able to shop and everything else. I knew Sydney had to be my home.”

But safety was a key concern for the transgender community, who weren’t protected under federal anti-discrimination laws until 2013.

Wolfgramme says the community faced “not being allowed to go to school, not being allowed a roof over our heads, being bashed [and] not getting work”.

Many people also weren’t able to legally change their names, which, as well as feeling dehumanising, made it risky to travel abroad with a passport that didn’t match one’s gender presentation.

Wolfgramme made history in 1997 as the first transgender person to legally change their name in Fiji, but she says she was motivated partly by love.

A blak and white photo of a woman smiling, wearing a black and white dress and leaning away from a wall with a fireplace.

Katherine Wolfgramme in 2000. She says she was punished for her gender expression as a child. Source: Supplied

“After several years on hormones, I developed into a beautiful young woman and I landed myself a very nice eligible man. He wanted me to travel with him, but I couldn’t travel under a male name because I didn’t want to embarrass him.”

Deciding to contact the Fijian government to change her identity documents, she first started ringing its embassy in Canberra but they stopped answering her daily phone calls.

She flew to Fiji but the government refused to see her and she was stuck in a hotel for weeks.

A call to Wolfgramme’s uncle in Fiji was a turning point: he used his connections to secure an appointment for her with a government contact, and she was eventually allowed her to change her name.

She says having the support of her Fijian family not only helped her secure a new legal name but has been a great comfort throughout her life, with many relatives commenting on how much she looks like her mother.

A woman wearing a kaftan and a headband looking off to the left

Wolfgramme says she is amazed at how much progress has been made on LGBTIQ+ rights. Source: Supplied

“Transgender people are a part of life in most Pacific cultures. It’s not encouraged, but it’s not treated as if they don’t exist and it differs between cultures as well,” Wolgramme says, adding that discrimination against transgender people can often be attributed to colonisation.

“Colonial cultures sexualise anything that is outside of their norms.”

Yet Wolfgramme says she feels optimistic about the progress that’s been made, particularly in Australia. She says in her 53 years, she has seen the “pendulum of politics swing two steps forward and one step back” enough times to feel assured that any attempts to erode transgender rights won’t be supported by Australians.

“We have a way to go, of course, but the way to go is far closer than going back. I’m constantly amazed at what we’ve achieved.”

‘My 100 days of hell’

KL Joy says a conversation with one of their sibling’s children seven years ago completely changed their life.

A person wearing a black singlet and glasses, smiling with their head tilted

KL Joy says their identity has shifted over the years but they are comfortable with the label gender fluid. Source: Supplied

The 55-year-old is an archivist, historian, person with disabilities and student living in Ballarat, Victoria.

“I always knew I was queer; I went through all the labels. I think I’ve got the L, the G, the B, the T but ‘genderqueer’ is what I’m connecting with at the moment,” they say of their identity.

At 47, Joy became the first Australian to enter the International Miss Bootblack competition: a competition that celebrates queer leather culture and the practice of bootblacking, which Joy describes as “shoe-shining with soul”.

A person in a kilt sits on a stool while another person in a kilt sits below and polishes their boots

KL Joy (right) finds community and self-expression in the practice of bootblacking. Source: Supplied

This led to “some feelings around gender” for Joy and not long after that, they had a conversation with their nibling (a gender-neutral term for the child of one’s sibling).

“They mentioned the term gender non-conforming and I was like ‘ooh what’s that?’

It was like a crucible. It cracked me open to change me in ways that I couldn’t have expected at that time.

Growing up, Joy had always been drawn to androgynous figures like UK singers David Bowie and Annie Lennox, but didn’t think they could ever present their gender in that way because they weren’t “stick-thin like Bowie”.

“I wanted people to be unsure if I was a boy or a girl when walking down the street. That was what I needed. And it wasn’t until I was 47 that I started to think more about that.”

Seeking hormone-replacement treatment for menopause, Joy opted to take a dose of testosterone which they say has put them “in a really good frame of mind”.

Joy is also a parent to a now 18-year-old son, who has been raised as an activist his whole life.

The two started campaigning for marriage equality in 2004 when Australia’s parliament voted to change the Marriage Act to reinforce the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman.

Joy says that as they again ramped up campaigning efforts in 2017 ahead of Australia’s postal survey, they “copped a lot of flak” and regularly felt they were in “fight or flight” mode, uncertain whether stickers on their car would attract violence or support.

“I called that campaign my 100 days of hell,” Joy says.

“But as hard as it was and as hard as the PTSD about it is, that’s probably one of my most positive achievements.”

A child puts their arm around an adult. Both are smiling and wearing hoodies and are wrapped in a rainbow cloth

KL Joy with their son in 2015. The pair attended marriage equality rallies together. Source: Supplied / Michael Barnett

Ballarat returned a 70.1 per cent Yes vote. When it was revealed Australia had voted Yes, Joy burst into tears, a bodily reaction that resurfaces when they recall the physical toll of that period.

“There was the joy, but it was also the anger at having to go through something like that, the whole country debate and vote on whether or not we were valid citizens.”

Joy says they’re proud that marriage equality campaigning changed Australia for the better.

“At 21, queer youth are talking to a complete stranger about their partner and it’s normalised.

“I think that is one of the things that marriage equality was able to do in a good way.”

Finding a sense of ‘home’

Ross Rahman says a 30-year internal struggle over his sexuality is just starting to ease, thanks to a social group that’s “opened his eyes”.

The 48-year-old finance professional was born in Singapore and raised as a Muslim.

It wasn’t until he came to Australia to study as an international student at Canberra’s Australian National University in 1999 that he started to come to terms with the fact he is gay.

“When all my peers at school were pairing off, I was not interested and I was confused because at that point I wasn’t interested in boys or girls,” he says.

Rahman compares Canberra’s gay scene at the start of the millennium to a “kiddie pool”: It offered a gentle introduction to a new world for him after visiting Sydney and finding its brand of Oxford-Street-centric queer culture “too intense”.

He moved to Sydney after he graduated but says this was when “his struggles began” with balancing his sexuality and Muslim faith.

“A lot of people I spoke to have always chosen one or the other,” he says.

“Something about me was not willing to give up that faith. I still held on and it was to my own detriment.”

A large crowd of people mostly wearing pink sitting on grass looking at a stage

Thousands of people attend a ‘Pink Dot’ pride rally in Singapore. Source: Getty / SOPA Images/LightRocket

Rahman experienced a lot of guilt over being gay and felt the only path he had was to face condemnation.

“The impression that I had is if I dare bring this up [with family and other Muslims], I might get stoned to death.”

He says he became very cautious with who he let into his inner circle and created a small “chosen family”.

“I can count on one hand the number of people I call friends or my family here, but small as they are, they are so precious, they give so much to me,” he says.

Around 12 months ago, Rahman was feeling very distressed about Israel’s war on Gaza and wanted to connect with other Muslims who might also be feeling a sense of solidarity with Palestinians.

I didn’t have anyone else that I could talk to but I was thinking ‘I can’t be the only one going through this’.

“I did a quick Google search and found Sydney Queer Muslim Network. I don’t know why, but it had never occurred to me that an organisation like this existed.”

He says that although he had his chosen family, when he joined the group, he finally found his “home”.

“It feels like home, first and foremost, because of the shared experience.

“I’ve met other queer community members who have struggled with their faith, but I have never come across another queer Muslim, so that’s a different level of connection because it’s so raw.”

A poster advertising a support group in Western Sydney for Queer Muslims. It reads 'You're not alone' and has an illustration depicting a group of people with their hands raised.

A poster for the Sydney Queer Muslims network. Source: Supplied

Rahman says meeting other queer Muslims has shifted the rigidity he felt around his faith, “opening his eyes” on ways to navigate two identities.

“Everyone has one basic need. Everyone has a story to tell and they just need to know: ‘Do you see me? Do you hear me?’ That’s it.”

LGBTIQ+ Australians seeking support with mental health can contact QLife on 1800 184 527 or visit qlife.org.au. ReachOut.com also has a list of support services.

Readers seeking crisis support can ring Lifeline on 13 11 14 or text 0477 13 11 14, the Suicide Call Back Service on 1300 659 467 and Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800 (for young people aged up to 25). More information and support with mental health is available at beyondblue.org.au and on 1300 22 4636.