As you may or may not know, one of the greatest pleasures in my life is to sort things into piles and create lists. Make of that what you will.
So when I recently came across those ticket stubs from the early 70s that I wrote about in one of my posts from Sydney, I got excited because it gave me a reason to create another list!
And here it is. A chronologically ordered list of my Sydney ticket stubs from February 1972 to May 1973 – those crucially important 16 months of my life.
What strikes me is how many dances, parties, new and old films and live theatre, not to forget a Rolling Stones concert, that I actually got to! My new friends, lovers and mentors in Sydney took me under their wing and I saw many things that I would not have seen if it hadn’t been for them.
Thanks to them, I learned so much about how to be a proper homo!
Here’s the key to the ticket stubs:
- Film – with its year of production
- Bold – Live Theatre
- Italics – Dance/Party
BTW, if you’re viewing this table on a mobile device, you’ll have to scroll across.
| DATE | WHAT | WHERE | WITH | COST |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Feb 19 ’72 | The Boy Friend (’72) | Barclay | $1.75 | |
| Feb 27 | Carnal Knowledge (’71) | Regent | $2 | |
| Mar 3 | Aquarius Dance | Jewish House | Steve Golde | |
| Mar 8 | Klute (’71) | Darion New, Michael and Steven | $2 | |
| Mar 14 | Evening Students’ Party | Student Union Cellar, U. of Sydney | ||
| Mar 21 | Sunday, Bloody Sunday (’71) | Mayfair | $1.40 | |
| Mar 25 | CAMP Inc Dance | 393 Darling St, Balmain | ||
| Apr 2 | X, Y and Zee (Zee & Co.) (’72) | Bob Donaugh | ||
| Apr 18 | Love’s Labour’s Lost | Theatre Royal | Anna Lovett (my landlady), Tony, Alistair | |
| Apr 23 | The French Connection (’71) | Plaza | Steve Golde | $2.25 |
| Apr 25 | The Diary of a Mad Housewife (’70) | Paramount | Dave Schofield | |
| May 6 | Jesus Christ, Superstar | Capitol | Barry Prothero | |
| May 9 | Boys in the Band (’70) | Forum | Chuck Meakin | $2 |
| May 27 | CAMP Inc Dance | 393 Darling St, Balmain | Roger & Paul, Tony, Rex Wright, Chuck Meakin | |
| Jun 23 | The Last Picture Show (’71) | Gala | Paul Shaw | |
| July 5 | The Concert for Bangladesh (’72) | Henry Tunbridge & Gaye | $1 | |
| Jul 8 | Sydney Gay Liberation Fundraising Dance | 393 Darling St, Balmain | ||
| Jul 29 | Marx Bros (’33) + Laurel & Hardy (’32) | Student Union Theatre, U. of Sydney | My pupils from St. Mary’s School | |
| Sep 4 | City Bus Excursion | City of Brisbane | ||
| Sep 4 | The Revolutionary Group (Band?) | Queensland Uni dance | Peter | |
| Sep 22 | Godspell | Dianne Reggett, Jenny, Jan and John | ||
| Sep 22 | Sydney Gay Liberation Fundraising Dance | Upper Floor, Manning House, U. of Sydney | ||
| Sep 29 | Cabaret (’72) | Mayfair | Terry Sanders | |
| Oct 30 | Ferry | from Palm Beach to Bobbin Head | 4th, 5th & 6th Years from St. Mary’s | |
| Nov 11 | What’s Up Doc? (’72) | Lyceum | Terry Sanders | |
| Dec 9 | Harold & Maude (’71) | Theatre Crow’s Nest | Robert Tucker | $1.60 |
| Dec 15 | Pub/Club | Midas Club, Parramatta Rd, Petersham | Terry, Robert, John | |
| Jan 27 ’73 | Citizen Kane (’41) | Ritz Randwick | Robert Tucker | |
| Feb 9 | Cabaret (again!) | Mayfair | John Storey | |
| Feb 26 | Rolling Stones Live | Randwick Racecourse | Henry Tunbridge | |
| Mar 12 | Borsalino (’70) & The Conformist (’70) | Penthouse (?) | Robert Tucker | $1 |
| Mar 18 | The Blue Angel (’30) & Tristana (’70) | Mosman Classic | John, Terry, Robert & Leigh | $2 |
| Mar 30 | Travels with my Aunt (’72) | Bruce Jones | $1 | |
| Mar 31 | Harold & Maude (again!) | Wintergarden | Bruce Jones | $1.70 |
| Apr 15 | Rail Ticket | Visiting Bruce’s Nana, Nollie and Aunt Liz in Leura in the Blue Mountains | Bruce Jones | |
| Apr 17 | Rail Ticket | My last day teaching at de la Salle School, Marrickville | ||
| Apr 26 | Two Gentlemen of Verona | Her Majesty’s, Melbourne | Michael Sullivan & Bernadette | |
| Apr 27 | Gay Lib Dance, “Gender Confusion” | In Melbourne | With Melbourne Gay Libbers | |
| May 5 | Sydney Gay Lib Dance | Paddo Town Hall | “Everyone was there!” My last night in Sydney |
What’s next?
Want to know what’s next now that I’ve fully covered my Sydney experiences, past and present?
Because of all my experiences sorting and donating my old queer archives and other bits and pieces to various institutions and independent queer archives in different cities around the world, many questions have arisen in my head which I’d like to tackle and get your thoughts on. Therefore I want to examine questions like:
Where do queer/trans archives belong and how should they be handled?
- Who is best able to care for them, promote them, update them and make them available?
- Independent/community-based archives or large, publicly-funded institutions?
- Are archives better kept locally or centralized in the capital cities?
- Should archives be digitized or kept as hard copies?
- Are the archives mainly for academic researchers or should they be more broadly accessible?
- As for individuals’ collections:
- Should an individual’s archives be kept all in one place as a “Collection” or spread out across different archives?
- Should an individual’s queer and non-queer archives be kept in the same place or kept separate?
- What counts as queer anyway?
- How do we ensure that diverse communities are engaged and feel safe with queer/trans archiving collections to guarantee that collections are broadened beyond older, white, cisgender gay men’s collections like mine!
I’ll tell you my thoughts next time. Can’t wait, eh?
In the meantime, here’s one final glance at those tickets.
How sweet – and it brought up memories seeing the name of Barry Prothero…
Thanks, Julian. Yes, lots of wonderful memories of the joyous Barry in Sydney as well as in London during the 70s and 80s. Then we lost him in 1996 to HIV/AIDS, as we lost so many of our generation.
The films you saw also brought back a lot of memories for me from that same era.
Yes, we all tended to go to roughly the same films during those early days; there were just so few with any homo elements in them at all that we had to grab what we could.
I didn’t know you saw the Rolling Stones live! That’s an impressive list of performances/films. Well done, Gregg.
To my shame, I’d forgotten about that Stones concert until I saw the ticket stub. Oops. 🫢 In any case, thanks for looking through the list! 🥰
I saw many of the same things at the same time, but in London. Building a transnational sense of identity and community.
You’re right, Jeffrey. Thanks. I also remember checking out the audiences at those events wondering who else might be “like me” and part of my community. As we’ve also said, there just weren’t that many gay/lesbian things for us to go to them and we’d grab at anything.
My initial thought, Gregg, is that your colourful, ripped stubs need some kind of artistic treatment – which would be challenging, considering your notes on the backs are as integral to the memories as the tickets themselves. My creative mind is blank.
You pose interesting questions about gay archives. I have my own gay archive of sorts. It’s a literal fishbowl with hundreds of names and phone numbers on slips of paper from before we had email addresses and before local area codes were necessary. Every once in a while I sift through them. Some have notes about when and where I got them, most don’t. I have no recollection of who these men are.
My question is, what to do with them? They can’t just be tossed. The fishbowl is a symbol of my youth. It represents years of gay life. It’s a souvenir and an artifact. But also, it’s meaningless to everyone but me.
So I’m looking forward to your thoughts on handling gay archives.
Thanks for your thoughtful comments, Brock. I think you could say that what the Australian Queer Archives did with my ticket stubs in that display of them at that “Party” exhibition in Sydney could count as an “artistic treatment”. Something I would never have thought of myself.
I have to challenge you on your statement that those hundreds of slips of paper of yours are meaningless to everyone but you. Not true. There are certainly stories to be told that would get my attention! Even just photographs of the slips (and that fishbowl!) tell a story of those days, even if you don’t remember details. I do remember you commenting on my post “Gay Sex in the 70s: My Story”. You could probably do/write something similar with your bits and pieces!
This is great Gregg! So impressed with how organized you were in terms of preserving all of this. Like others have mentioned, I have an archive of objects myself – aside from my photographic archive. You’re inspiring me to get these archives in order.
Thanks, Pierre. As for your own non-photographic objects, I’m curious as to what they are. I’ll look forward to seeing them whenever you get them in order and ready to be displayed.