The Archives’ Queer History Walk is a highlight of Melbourne’s annual Midsumma gay and lesbian festival. Our 2009 walk (pdf, 257 KB) took on the city, starting at the State Library. Our 2010 virtual walk toured Queer Oz Folk, and in 2011 we headed over the river to South Yarra.
Stops on our history walks have included:
State Library of Victoria
The State Library hosted the Melbourne showing of the exhibition ‘Forbidden Love, Bold Passions: an Exhibition of Lesbian Stories 1900s to 1990s’, curated by History Inverted. The exhibition toured nationally in the mid 1990s.
Camp people may also have pondered on the meaning of cross dressing Joan of Arc and the naked St George wielding an impressive large lance.
Parliament House
Law reform occurred in the early 1980s. Current campaigns cover anti-discrimination measures, adoption and marriage.
Princess Theatre
Gladys Moncrieff, born in 1893 and popularly known as ‘Our Glad’, was a big stage and recording star of the 1920s and 1930s. One of her shows at the Princess was The Cedar Tree. The ‘Gallery Girls’ was a fan club of factory girls who were devoted to their star.
Gladys lived with her mother into her 30’s. In 1924, after her mother’s death, she married Tom More, a dancer, because ‘he was the only man she knew well enough to ask’. They parted in 1928. Not long after, she met Elsie Wilson, who became her secretary and companion, and stayed with her for the next 46 years. She retired in the 1960s, and died on the Gold Coast in 1976. (The Story of the Theatre Royal, Ian Bevan, 1993)
Regent Theatre – Frank Thring
The Regent Theatre, built in 1929, was the flagship of the Hoyts theatre chain, established by Frank Thring, snr. His son, Frank Thring jnr, became a noted Australian theatre actor, with some Hollywood roles (such as Nero in the 1950s epic Ben Hur). He became a larger than life character in the 1970s, playing something of a parody of himself as a large, bald, sharp-tongued man. He was seen at all the right parties, especially those at his own house, where his sexuality was not hidden.
Alcaston House – Dr Storer
The home of the notorious Dr R V Storer, early sex reformer, venereologist and birth control advocate. In 1941 two policemen burst into Storer’s flat and arrested him in bed with an 18 year old soldier. They had been gathering evidence by means of holes drilled in the walls of the flat. Storer did 12 months in Pentridge Prison as a result.
Tasma Terrace
Built in two stages in 1878 and 1887, this row of terrace houses began to be used as boarding houses at the beginning of the twentieth century. One resident, a Mr John Law, is described as ‘by far the most handsome man in the place, who had won a male beauty contest’. He had a companion simply described as ‘his friend’, Joe McCudden. (Fairlie Taylor, Time Recalled, 1978)
State Film Centre – Gay and Lesbian Film Festival
The State Film Centre was one of the venues of the Gay and Lesbian Film Festival in the 1980s and 1990s.
Dr Gertrude Glossip AO led the 2003 Queer History Walk
