Gay Guide to Sydney
On 24 June 1978 a few hundred people marched down Oxford Street behind a truck, and the police moved in on them in Kings Cross and made 53 arrests. Two days later the Sydney Morning Herald printed the names, addresses and occupations of everyone charged, and people lost jobs, homes and tenancies over it. Homosexuality was still a crime in New South Wales and stayed one until 1984. In 2016 both the state parliament and the newspaper formally apologized. The marchers are known as the 78ers, and they still lead the parade every year, which is the part most visitors do not know they are watching.
Oxford Street through Darlinghurst is the historic strip. Stonewall, Universal, The Oxford Hotel, Palms on Oxford, The Beacham and The Colombian sit within a few blocks of each other, with Trade Club around the corner on Crown Street and the saunas clustered off Burton and Taylor. The strip took a beating from the lockout laws in the 2010s and has been rebuilding since they were lifted, so it is livelier now than its reputation suggests. In Green Park at the top of the hill stands the Gay and Lesbian Holocaust Memorial, installed in 2001: a pink triangle and a black triangle set against each other to form a fractured Star of David.
The inner west is the other scene, and for a lot of locals it is the real one. Newtown runs on King Street, with the Bank Hotel and the Newtown Hotel at its center and a queerer, scruffier, more mixed crowd than Oxford Street draws. Next door in Erskineville, the Imperial is the pub that opens and closes Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. It was added to the state heritage register in 2025, and it still does drag downstairs.
The Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras runs across February and into March, ending in a parade that is one of the largest anywhere and is broadcast nationally. Queer Screen programs the film festival alongside it. For beaches, Lady Bay near Watsons Bay and Obelisk in Mosman are the harbor nude beaches, and the north end of Bondi is the easy option.
Sydney is expensive and spread out, but the ferries are cheap, the water is everywhere, and the scene runs year round rather than only in Mardi Gras season.