At its best downstairs, and outside into the beer garden under that great mango tree, the venue prior to that was the upstairs balcony, where lookouts monitored the street for poofter-bashers and the police, sometimes one and the same.
In the small, intimate, shall we say, very gropable venue upstairs, you squeezed by people to get to the bar with roaming hands an inevitability. Sometimes a welcome, sometimes an unwelcome experience. I met Bruce there one night when he yelled ‘Hey’ at me to get my attention. He never changed much in the 10 years after despite my ignoring him with his crass ways after that first fling, meaning to impart a lesson in how to pick someone nicely. Fail! Not an option for him who loved a party. A futile effort, but …show more content…
I remember a workshop he held about issues of HIV/AIDS and dealing with death for a group including my mate Peter Wilson, a hail fellow well met queen, who managed the better Northern Beaches establishments like Argosy and Clifton Sands, and looked after the Sisters of Mercy's substantial holdings, becoming their property manager. He let one of their houses on the seafront at Clifton Beach to myself and Peter Butler at one time, and we became chummy with a great bunch of nuns who achieved remarkable things, including funding units at Ishmael Road for people living with HIV/AIDS, and all without any support from their own Catholic Church, for ‘moral’ reasons. These nuns, Sisters Pam and Patricia among their own dwindling numbers ran the Mt St Bernard School at Herberton and a respite centre at Tinaroo. I used our truck to take some furniture to the rest house at Tinaroo, and after we dropped the furniture, we found a couple of cases of XXXX on the passenger seat.
Gae from Gordonvale was one of the first Cairns gay boys to die from AIDS. A very handsome and hot man. He was a local, born and bred, and like many local gay kids visited Sydney as often as he could. He worked in the shoe department at David Jones in the Bolands Centre on Lake Street. He was somewhat aloof, probably shy, and I don’t really recall him being with anyone in particular. He was a classic case of being somewhat abandoned when his diagnosis was known. While nothing was ever said, rumours were rife and when he did die, it was a shock for the entire community. AIDS was in
In the small, intimate, shall we say, very gropable venue upstairs, you squeezed by people to get to the bar with roaming hands an inevitability. Sometimes a welcome, sometimes an unwelcome experience. I met Bruce there one night when he yelled ‘Hey’ at me to get my attention. He never changed much in the 10 years after despite my ignoring him with his crass ways after that first fling, meaning to impart a lesson in how to pick someone nicely. Fail! Not an option for him who loved a party. A futile effort, but …show more content…
I remember a workshop he held about issues of HIV/AIDS and dealing with death for a group including my mate Peter Wilson, a hail fellow well met queen, who managed the better Northern Beaches establishments like Argosy and Clifton Sands, and looked after the Sisters of Mercy's substantial holdings, becoming their property manager. He let one of their houses on the seafront at Clifton Beach to myself and Peter Butler at one time, and we became chummy with a great bunch of nuns who achieved remarkable things, including funding units at Ishmael Road for people living with HIV/AIDS, and all without any support from their own Catholic Church, for ‘moral’ reasons. These nuns, Sisters Pam and Patricia among their own dwindling numbers ran the Mt St Bernard School at Herberton and a respite centre at Tinaroo. I used our truck to take some furniture to the rest house at Tinaroo, and after we dropped the furniture, we found a couple of cases of XXXX on the passenger seat.
Gae from Gordonvale was one of the first Cairns gay boys to die from AIDS. A very handsome and hot man. He was a local, born and bred, and like many local gay kids visited Sydney as often as he could. He worked in the shoe department at David Jones in the Bolands Centre on Lake Street. He was somewhat aloof, probably shy, and I don’t really recall him being with anyone in particular. He was a classic case of being somewhat abandoned when his diagnosis was known. While nothing was ever said, rumours were rife and when he did die, it was a shock for the entire community. AIDS was in