Community Through Catastrophe: The AIDs crisis in and around Darlinghurst

Project Description

‘Community Through Catastrophe’ is a research project that explores the lived experiences and memories of the AIDs crisis in and around Darlinghurst in Sydney, Australia. HIV/AIDs emerged in the 1980s as a confounding and terrifying constellation of symptoms, often described as a ‘gay cancer’ because its high prevalence amongst gay men. It soon became apparent that an HIV or AIDs diagnosis was terminal. For the next 15 years, the queer folk of Darlinghurst were engaged in what they would later describe as the fight of their lives. The arrival of combination treatments in 1996 transformed the consequences of seroconversion, but the legacies of that fifteen years of care, fear and loss remains.

Much of this history has been written and told in a national frame. It has been narrated as an ‘Australian’ story. The inner east of Sydney was, however, the epicenter of the pandemic in Australia. Well over half the cases of HIV and AIDs occurred within what had been described in the early 1980s as the ‘gay ghetto,’ and by far the majority of those cases were amongst gay men. This was a pandemic that was experienced locally, in the intimate and deeply connected social relations of the gaybourhood.

What happened, then, in this space that queer folks had forged as one of safety and experimentation in the 1970s? What did it mean to live in a neighbourhood that was quite suddenly oriented abound the labours of care and activism in the context of growing and catastrophic loss? What did AIDs do to this queer world? And, how did those within this world draw upon their queer orientations to respond to it?

The project is led by Associate Professor Leigh Boucher at Macquarie University, has been generously funded by the Paul Ramsay Centre, and is supported by the Australian Centre for Public History (UTS) and the State Library of New South Wales.

David Urquhart. The AIDs Quilt in Green Park, C1994

The Podcast

This research will underpin a podcast produced by Impact Studios in late February 2026. You should subscribe to History Lab now so that the podcast will hit your feed as soon as its released!

The Oral Histories

The project draws upon existing oral history collections at the State Library of New South Wales, the National Library of Australia, Pride History Group and the Australian Queer Archives. However, it is also underpinned by an attempt to access and investigate a social world often, perhaps ironically, excluded from these collections, which tend to focus on the important stories, experience and insights of activists, carers, health professionals, and community workers during the AIDS crisis. This project has, instead, sought to interview folks who lived, worked, played and danced in what was, sometimes pejoratively, described as the ‘commercial’ gay world in the 1980s and 1990s. How was HIV/AIDs lived and experienced by those who looked spent more time at City Gym and the Midnight Shift than they did at the community meeting and political march? It draws on a set of new oral histories, which will be lodged by the State Library of New South Wales. It also seeks to take those who live a perhaps less politically engaged and self-conscious life just as seriously as makers of meaning and memory, in relation to both HIV/AIDs and queer life in general. A key focus for the research has been on the experiences and memory of Peter Vincent, who was a trainer at City Gym in the 80s and early 90s, and who died from an AIDS related illness in 1991.

Pages from the Sydney Star Observer: Peter Vincent at City Gym, a page of AIDS obituaries from 1993, a promotional page for a fundraising party at the Midnight Shift.

The Researcher

This research is being undertaken by Associate Professor Leigh Boucher, who is an historian in the School of Humanities at Macquarie University. Leigh is an historian of queer politics and culture, and his most recent co-authored book is Personal Politics, which examined the relationship between sexual and gender politics and Australian citizenship from the early 1970s until the achievement of same sex marriage in Australia. You can find more information about his research at his Macquarie University staff page. He also lives, works, plays and dances in Darlinghurst. You can contact him via email (leigh.boucher@mq.edu.au) or on instagram.