In this August edition of the First Mardi Gras Inc. Newsletter, we have:
- Judy Small, Diane Minnis, Ken Davis and Cr Linda Scott with Tributes to Betty Hounslow
- David Abello and Deborah Macarthur-Newson on LGBTIQA Rights Rally
- Sue Fletcher on First Mardi Gras Inc. Meeting with Qtopia
- Bob Harvey on Tamworth Pride Fair Day in the Spring!
- Photo of August 78ers Lunch
- How to buy Badges and Books
- Calendar of Events.
The First Mardi Gras Inc. Strategic Review Workshop is from 1-4pm, Saturday 9 September 2023.
Our next First Mardi Gras Inc. 78ers Lunch is at 12pm, Sunday 1 October 2023, Terminus Hotel, Pyrmont, downstairs room, RSVP: info@78ers.org.au. Lunches are every two months.
And the First Mardi Gras Inc. Annual General Meeting is at 4pm, Saturday 21 October 2023 by Zoom.
Diane Minnis
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A Farewell and Celebration for Betty Hounslow was held in an overflowing Glebe Town Hall on Wednesday 9 August 2023. The link to the celebration is available on request to: info@lifeitesfunerals.com.
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Vale Betty Hounslow 01.08.1951 – 27.07.2023
Betty was indeed an icon of our community and will be sorely missed by all who knew, loved and/or worked with her.
I first met her in early 1975 when, as a not-yet-out 23 year old in my final year at UNSW, I moved into a share house next door to the one she was living in in Kepos St Redfern. She had an immediate influence on my thinking – such amazing energy and clarity – and I learned so much from her. I remember her in the campaigns after the first Mardi Gras in '78 and at so many other celebrations, events and protests over the years until I moved to Melbourne in 1988. I caught up with her briefly at the 78ers Cocktail Party for the 40th Mardi Gras, but hadn't seen her since.
The Australian LGBTIQA+ community will never forget her or her contribution to our culture, our political discourse and our human rights.
I also send my deepest condolences to Kate and to the others in Betty's family – their more intimate loss is so substantial, and I hope they know how much Betty was loved and honoured both within our community and outside.
78er Judy Small
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Celebrating Betty Hounslow
From a Farewell and Celebration for Betty Hounslow 9.8.23
Today, I pay tribute to Betty Hounslow and her outstanding contribution to many activist groups….including the Queensland Anti-Freeway Movement; the Sydney-based Queensland Solidarity Group; the New Left Party and Socialist Lesbians.
As a 78er, Betty was actively involved in the protests after the 1978 Mardi Gras arrests, and played a key role in community consultations on Mardi Gras’ move to summer and in the organisation of the 1981 Parade.
I got to know Betty in Queensland Solidarity Group meetings and the campaign after the first Mardi Gras and was struck by her warmth, leadership and ability to motivate people.
Betty was integral to the upsurge of gay and lesbian activism in the late 70s and 80s – both political and cultural – including singing in the Gay Liberation Quire. Betty founded the Gay and Lesbian Immigration Task Force in 1984 (more on that in Ken Davis’ letter shortly) and assisted in the development of the AIDS Council of NSW between 1985 and 1990.
In 2017, when we started First Mardi Gras Inc. a community association for 78ers, we were delighted when Betty came to initial meetings and when she reluctantly agreed to stand for our Management Committee. Then she was into the thick of preparing for the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras 40th Anniversary, hosting Working Group meetings at her and Kate’s home and chairing a public forum. Betty generously opened their home to many Management Committee meetings, pre-Covid, including cooking us dinner. Betty was also an elected member of the Mardi Gras 78ers Committee.
After she stepped down from the First Mardi Gras Inc. Committee to concentrate on her work at the Asylum Seekers Centre, Betty remained a source of guidance and wisdom. She recently spoke at our launch of Voices from 1978, having contributed her memories of 1978 to the book.
Betty was a force of nature – that is, a person who is full of energy, unstoppable, and unforgettable. She persuaded us to do things a certain way, which I’m sure Betty did in other groups and organisations, and we continue to follow Betty’s guidance today.
Betty Hounslow was unstoppable and unforgettable – in both her activist and professional endeavours – she was a wonderful friend and will be greatly missed.
Diane Minnis
78er and First Mardi Gras Inc. Co-Chair
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Letter from Jerusalem
From a Farewell and Celebration for Betty Hounslow 9.8.23
I heard about Betty’s death while working in Ramallah, she had emailed me the day before. I am writing now from occupied Jerusalem.
For me and others, Betty was an important friend, and comrade and teacher. I met her when she moved to Sydney and was living in Redfern. She was involved with revolutionary socialist groups different from the one I was in, but Betty, as a principled socialist feminist, always worked across boundaries, with women and men, communists, anarchists, radical feminists, liberals, socialists, radicals, Christians..…. She added her wisdom, humour and warmth to our lives and campaigns.
Betty was involved in organising around worker’s rights, democratic rights, women’s liberation, environment, prisons, censorship, indigenous sovereignty, Apartheid, internationalism and peace, and lesbian & gay freedom, and more.
I remember Betty as a leading socialist lesbian activist in the late 70s. She was not at the night time Mardi Gras on 24 June 1978, but sprang into action immediately, trying to gather bail money, and she was arrested in the August demonstration. She was a key organiser of the first summer Mardi Gras in 1981. She was part of campaigning to remove the Summary Offenses Act and add homosexuality as a ground in the NSW Anti-Discrimination law. She was in the Gay Liberation Quire, and helped with Gay Waves. She helped organise lesbian nights at the gay sauna in Oxford Street. Later she helped the development of the AIDS Council.
In 1983, when Graeme Bray and his Japanese partner, Ryosuke Shiaishi, came to ask for help at Marrickville Legal centre, Betty showed her excellent creative political methodology. Instead of just giving pessimistic advice, she brought together a large collective of the Australian and overseas same-sex partners.
Betty and I were often the only non-coupled people at the meetings. The people in the Gay and Lesbian Immigration Task Force often had no activist experience, they created all the advocacy and lobbying and self-help, without the inhibitions that us older activists had internalised. It was the first large lesbian and gay group that had a wild mix of genders, classes, ages and ethnicities or nationalities.
It was a miraculous campaign, winning a major concession from the right wing Labor Minister in 1985, and later gained an innovative and flexible new immigration status of interdependency, sadly lost in 2009. Parallel to GLITF were issues of queer refugees, and HIV and immigration. So many applicants owe so much to Betty’s crafting of GLITF as a confident and successful team. So many strong bonds were forged, though AIDS grief became a heavy burden on many of the GLITF people. Betty maintained her extraordinary contributions to refugees with her leadership of the Asylum Seekers’ Centre.
As a young woman, Betty had a vocation as a Mercy nun, with distinctive interpretation of the vows of poverty, celibacy and obedience. She confided in Fabian LoSchiavo that she had seen on the Dead Nuns’ board that the name of St Therese of the Holy Face was now available in her order, but her Mother Superior had overruled her desire. In honour of her work in lesbian and gay immigration, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence canonised St Betty of the Holy Face.
I met Betty in Cambodia in the early 1990s, when she was working on human rights, much loved by her Khmer colleagues. Later she took leadership roles in the Fred Hollows Foundation, and was elected vice president of the Australian Council for International Development. She was a well-respected progressive purpled-haired Nicorette-chewing lesbian, in a sector that has a dark side of sexism and heterosexism. She contributed as a valuable development expert on the board of the organisation I have long worked for, Union Aid Abroad – APHEDA.
Betty is a terrible loss to many of our communities. May Her Memory be a Blessing.
Ken Davis
78er and First Mardi Gras Inc. Co-Chair
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City of Sydney Council Condolence Motion 21.8.23 – Vale Betty Hounslow AM
I begin by acknowledging Betty’s friends and loved ones, including her beloved partner Kate Harrison, Diane Minnis, Ken Davis, and Robyn Kennedy, and Mary Ann O’Loughlin, as well as Betty’s sister Mary Hounslow and her friend Margo Moore.
Betty Hounslow was a fierce and dedicated advocate and activist in the cause of solidarity, partnership, accountability, movement building, equality and justice.
In 1978, she was one of the pioneering activists who organised the Drop the Charges campaigns after Sydney’s first Mardi Gras and the police brutality and charges that followed.
She went on to play a significant role in the organisation of the 1981 Mardi Gras Parade, Sydney’s first summer Mardi Gras, the first step towards the march becoming the fabulous celebration of diversity and inclusion that it is today.
A life-long trade unionist, and social justice advocate, Betty was awarded the NSW Justice Medal, and she was appointed as a Member of the Order of Australia.
She was also, in the 1970s, granted another honour: officially canonised by Mother Inferior of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, as Saint Betty Therese of the Holy Face for her work on gay and lesbian immigration. Surely the highest honour our nation can bestow!
Her commitment to fairness and justice in Australia’s immigration system continued in her advocacy for the rights of refugees and asylum seekers, including serving on the board of the Asylum Seekers Centre of NSW, and chairing the Board for three years.
Betty extended her steadfast dedication to equality, solidarity and community to a wide range of causes, including women’s refugees, community legal centres, Indigenous health programs, being Executive Director of ACOSS for seven years, and overseas aid and development, both through APHEDA-Union Aid Abroad, the Deputy CEO of the Fred Hollows Foundation, and time working in Cambodia for the UN on human rights issues.
She is remembered as having tremendous strategic nous and a superb grasp of tactics – but also as someone whose genuine humility and humour disarmed opponents and forged deep friendships.
Betty will be deeply missed by all who had the pleasure and the privilege to know her, but of course most profoundly by her partner Kate, to whom I offer my deepest sympathy and condolences.
I ask that the Lord Mayor likewise express the City’s condolences on the loss of this wonderful unionist, community activist and advocate for justice by writing to Betty’s partner and her family, and that we observe a minute’s silence to honour and commemorate Betty’s life and her dedication to the development of our Australian and international community.
ALP Councillor Linda Scott
Lord Mayor Clover Moore added to the motion, noting Betty’s important role in establishing the Gay and Lesbian Immigration Task Force in the 1980s, and successfully lobbying for changes to Australia’s immigration system to recognise residency rights for same-sex couples.
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On Saturday 5 August, 78ers joined many others at the LGBTIQA Rights Rally at Sydney Town Hall, with banners unfurled.
Organised by Community Action on Rainbow Rights (CARR) and supporters, the protest focused on the Anti-Discrimination Amendment (Religious Vilification) Bill 2023 brought into NSW Parliament by the Labor government. CARR is working with other groups to build a broader collective action. The next protest is planned for Sunday October 22.
David Abello
78er and First Mardi Gras Inc. Committee Member
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78ers David Abello, Dave Urquhart, Jesse Hooley, Johnny Whitehead, Deborah Macarthur-Newson, Diane Minnis and Diane Fieldes attended the LGBTIQA (with an emphasis on Trans Rights) rally and march. All the speakers were impressive particularly the speech by the mother of a trans child and our own 78er David Abello who delivered a concise and eloquent speech on LGBTIQA rights history and LGBTIQA disability rights.
78er Deborah Macarthur-Newson
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QTOPIA is in its infancy. Its DNA is born from the desire to have a permanent space for an AIDS memorial, but QTOPIA is so much more, developing into a museum and education space. In many ways they are being very brave to undertake this project, facing a level of community criticism and the usual external homophobia which is compounded by how polarising the site is for some of us. To raise the level of financial support required they no doubt need well-known (and connected) Patrons and Board members and they have them. Part of their challenge will be to bring the ever-critical community with them.
From their website: QTOPIA’s aim is to create a welcoming and inclusive space devoted to the memory, education and celebration of our unique and diverse histories, to protect, respect and extend the equality of future LGBTQIA+ lives.
Recently, Greg Fisher, QTOPIA CEO and Elaine Czulkowski, QTOPIA Chair addressed an online meeting of First Mardi Gras Inc. members to provide information about QTOPIA and to respond to our questions.
For the past two years QTOPIA’s focus was the foundation work including governance and legalities, a business development plan, securing space and funding. They had World Pride in their sights and in collaboration with other organisations, especially the National Arts School were able to have a presence during the Festival in 2023.
There are on-going questions about the location – especially given the history of the old police station and what it means to us. But I think that bus has left. Securing a permanent site for QTOPIA has been a challenge and Darlinghurst Police station may not be our preferred venue, but the Board are mindful of the trauma of the space and are working with a trauma councillor and 78er Garry Wotherspoon to look at ways to support people entering the space. A lot of thought and consideration has gone into location. QTOPIA take control of the property at the end of August, with the aim of holding an exhibition during the SGLMG 2024 season on the ground level.
Curatorial
QTOPIA will be a museum that examines the political, medical and human response to HIVAIDS, pivotal points in our history, illegality to legality, inequality to equality, as Greg stated they are very broad terms – but personally, I am hopeful they are broad enough to include all of us in our gloriousness.
There is strong collaboration with the National Arts School with a focus on curatorial and educational. The curatorial team is led by Dr Liz Bradshaw – Lead Curator, National Art School. Liz is putting together a team of curators from the National Art School and curators from the LGBTIQ+ community. QTOPIA is working closely with other museums, archivists, the Pride History Group and aim to have curricula linked to education programs for teachers and educators in a place of queer culture and history. Approximately 30% will be a permanent exhibition with 70% rotating exhibitions.
Funding sources and perceptions
QTOPIA is an ambitious project and requires solid funding for development and the future. The acceptance of Murdoch money has been controversial, but it is given unconditionally. We were assured, there is no reporting to the Murdochs and the funds are administered by JP Morgan – nothing to do with the Murdochs. Personally, I am happy to accept their money. It won’t cleanse the past and they have no influence on the development so perhaps they could give more!
Perception around community engagement
Community organisations were consulted with, plus panel sessions and open discussions during the past two years. More community consultation is coming, but if you want your group to learn more or be involved you can invite QTOPIA to an information session.
Exhibition involvement will be through their curatorial committee. The process was unclear, but I think more information will be available from QTOPIA in the future. If you want to know more or engage with them, I suggest you sign up to their newsletter: https://qtopiasydney.com.au/
My take-away from the session was QTOPIA have a genuine intent to create a place that not only honours our history, but provides a strong educational focus and perhaps in many ways we may want to feel QTOPIA is for us, but maybe it really is for the future, especially the young LGBTIQ that may still be in schools, the youth who are uncertain, those who are yet to come out and find their place will see themselves at QTOPIA.
There is no doubt QTOPIA will be a blend of trauma and triumph with different stories to tell.
Sue Fletcher
78er and First Mardi Gras Inc. Committee Member
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The Tamworth Pride Fair Day makes its return this year, a few weeks earlier than previous years, in time for the glorious Spring season and will be held again in Bi- Centennial Park on Saturday, 23 September, 9am to 2pm.
We are looking to be bigger and better this year with increased sponsorship and JobLink Plus is our major sponsor. Fifteen stalls have signed up so far and we are expecting a lot more to do so in the coming weeks as we deal with a huge number of daily inquiries.
The theme of this year’s Fair Day is: “This is Me”. The idea behind this is to encourage everyone to come dressed in ways that they wouldn’t normally from fear of judgement.
Some of the organisations/community groups who have agreed to participate with stalls are Headspace, St John’s Ambulance, SES and Centacare and we are confident more will get on board in the coming weeks.
Headspace, which is primarily concerned with mental health for our youth and provides counselling on youth related issues, will be providing a “chill out” stall to allow our queer youth a space to hang out together, away from all the activities of the day.
Centacare Tamworth on its stall will provide literature and information in regards to its psychological and counselling services and mediative and mental health programs. These services will have a particular focus on indigenous health and support for youth.
A Fashion Parade will be a major feature of the Fair Day and this will give people a chance to get on stage and strut their stuff and prizes will be awarded in different categories. So we are encouraging people to dress up as vibrantly and ostentatiously as possible. The Dianne Perpetual Trophy will return and we will be conducting fun games in the early afternoon.
Performers for the Fair Day are yet to be announced but we are hoping to draw on our local talent. Blake Riley, a very talented local drag artist, will be our MC.
Even though Fair Day activities wind up at 2pm, like last year we will have an After Party commencing around 7pm at The Press – a night club/bar in a basement and has a nostalgic feel to it.
Tamworth Pride Inc. would like to welcome members of the LGBTIQA + community outside of Tamworth to attend both the Fair Day and After Party on Saturday, 23 September and 78ers are most welcome! For further inquiries and updates please contact William Paul Weller (Tamworth Pride Inc. President) at tamworthpride@gmail.com.
Bob Harvey
78er and First Mardi Gras Inc. Member
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78er badges and our new Always an Ally badges are $5 each and postage is $3.09 (total $8.09). Postage is still $3.09 for up to five badges. To order badges, email your name, postal address and the number of badges required to info@78ers.org.au. Then make your payment by funds transfer. Use your name as the deposit reference. You can also post a cheque.
Voices from 1978 The first Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, is a 104 page, A5 book. You can get your copy for $15 plus $5 postage from Orders — First Mardi Gras (78ers.org.au) or buy it from The Bookshop Darlinghurst for $19.99. The Bookshop also does overseas orders, but best to email info@thebookshop.com.au for a postage quote. |
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Calendar of Events
- Broken Heel Festival, Broken Hill – 7-11 September 2023 Broken Heel Festival (bhfestival.com)
- First Mardi Gras Inc. Strategic Review Workshop – 1-4pm, Saturday 9 September 2023
- Tamworth Pride Fair Day and After Party – 23 September 2023 William Paul Weller tamworthpride@gmail.com
- First Mardi Gras Inc. 78ers Lunch – 12pm, Sunday 1 October 2023, Terminus Hotel, Pyrmont, downstairs room, RSVP: info@78ers.org.au
- First Mardi Gras Inc. Annual General Meeting – 4pm, Saturday 21 October 2023 by Zoom
- Rainbow on the Plains Festival, Hay – 17-19 November 2023 Titanium 2023 | Rainbow on the Plains | Hay Mardi Gras | Hay
- Sapphire Coast Pride, Bega Valley, www.Facebook.com/groups/sapphirecoastpride
- Wagga Wagga Mardi Gras – 9 March 2024 Wagga Mardi Gras | The biggest party Wagga's ever seen!.
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