The bloody riot four decades ago that led to today’s Mardi Gras celebration

SYDNEY’S streets may be awash with rainbows and glitter tonight, but 40 years ago it was blood that flecked the footpath.

ON SATURDAY, hundreds of thousands of people will line Sydney’s Oxford St to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.

For Sandi Banks, who was at the very first Mardi Gras in 1978, the commemoration is bittersweet; she still remembers the physical bruises and mental scars she received on that night.

“I was scared, I was fearful for my life. The very thought of it is still traumatic,” she told news.com.au of the events on the night of June 24, 1978.

“[A policeman] picked me up and threw me at the paddy wagon. The guy that grabbed me was huge. I was barely up to his waist,” said the diminutive Ms Banks, who ended up languishing in a prison cell with 52 other people.

Sandi Banks, one of the 78ers who marched in what would become the very first Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, outside the former Darlinghurst Police Station where she was locked up.

“The (police) van hit my chest. I was black and blue. There were paw marks on my arms from police for six weeks afterwards,” she said.

Behind the colour and cacophony of today’s Mardi Gras, there is a darker history. A past of police brutality and intimidation.

On that winter’s night in 1978, the last thing people expected was a riot. But protesters knew their actions were provocative. Homosexuality was legal in South Australia and the ACT but elsewhere it was still a punishable offence.

At the time, police were known to harass gay people and even pose as gay men and women to entrap victims.

That morning, in a show of solidarity with gay people in the US, hundreds of Sydneysiders marched through the CBD thoroughfare of Martin Place. As night drew in, the plan was for a much more chilled event — a parade through the gay hub of Darlinghurst.

Sydney Mardi Gras is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. Picture: Adam Taylor

“We gathered on that evening to celebrate our gayness. People were skipping down Oxford St, dancing and running into the bars going ‘out of the bars and onto the street’. It was fantastic,” Ms Banks said.

But things went south quickly. As the parade, whose sole float was a flatbed truck with a speaker lashed to it pumping out tunes, reached Hyde Park the police stepped in. A permit only allowed the marchers to walk down Oxford St and police were determined that would be the end of it.

“The whole parade went pear-shaped,” said Ms Banks, who is one of the group of “78ers”, the first Mardi Gras marchers.

“The police intervened, they turned off the PA system and pulled (the driver) out of the truck, But we’d decided that we’d had enough’. We all called out, ‘Let’s go up the Cross.’”

As the parade had swelled in numbers, the few police officers were outnumbered and there was little they could do to stop the surge.

In 1978, when the march took place by gay activists, homosexuality was illegal in all states but South Australia and the ACT. Picture: AAP Image/Australian Lesbian and Gay Archives

The night time parade started merrily enough with a march down Sydney’s Oxford St. Picture: Australian Gay and Lesbian Archives

Ms Banks said the remaining marchers practically ran the 2km toward the relative safety of Kings Cross, a notorious inner city suburb known for housing Sydney’s fringe citizens.

Again, Ms Banks helped hustle people out of the bars. However, the police had got a whole lot more organised.

“The police were there in huge numbers and we were given a command to disperse but we didn’t have time to.”

Ms Banks said something like 30 seconds passed between the initial call for the marchers to break up and the officers intervening. In the narrow main street of Kings Cross, there were precious few places to escape to anyway. So they fought back.

“The police were out of control. We were like lambs to the slaughter. They were coming in and grabbing people ... People picked up garbage bins and they were flying through the air towards the police.”

She said there was blood on the road as people were injured in the fracas. Many who were in attendance claim women were particularly targeted.

Scuffles broke out in Kings Cross. Picture: Australian Gay and Lesbian Archives

Police, many without identification badges, arrested 53 people and locked them up overnight at Darlinghurst Police Station. Picture: Australian Gay and Lesbian Archives

Police had taken off their identification numbers, claimed Ms Banks, a deliberate attempt to ensure they couldn’t be identified.

“We were trapped. They picked people up and threw them at the van and when they had a load they took them up to the police station up there at Darlinghurst.

“Twenty-three of us women were in one cell shoulder to shoulder sitting on the floor. It was the middle of winter and just two blankets were thrown in,” she said.

One protester got it far worse — his screams audible through the thick concrete walls as he was beaten. Outside, a crowd of hundreds began organising legal representation and collecting money to bail people out.

The day after the protest, police barred entry to the law courts where those arrested were taken. Picture: Australian Gay and Lesbian Archives

All the charges against the protesters were eventually dropped. But, for some, that hardly mattered given the names and occupations of every person arrested were put on the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald.

“The impact was that some people were exposed to their families for the first time, some were to lose their jobs and housing,” Ms Banks said.

The impact on the gay community as a whole was also huge. Demonstrations continued and the original protest has been commemorated every year since, albeit moved from June to a far warmer March evening.

Sydney’s first Mardi Gras is often held up as Australia’s answer to New York’s seminal 1969 Stonewall riots which galvanised LGBT rights in the US.

It would take until 1984 for NSW to finally repeal its anti-gay laws. And it would take until 1997 for Tasmania to do the same.

The rainbow flag flaying above Darlinghurst’s Taylor Square.

The police, along with army (above), are one of the many government organisations that march at Mardi Gras.

“The legacy of that parade was to give people the opportunity to come out and find their own standing in the community. Today, everyone has the opportunity to be themselves as a gay, lesbian, transsexual and all the others,” Ms Banks said.

NSW Police now march in the Mardi Gras parade and the rainbow flag flies from the local police station. In 2016, the force officially said sorry: “We apologise, and we acknowledge the pain and hurt that police actions caused at that event in 1978,” Superintendent Tony Crandell from the Surry Hills Local Area Command said at the time.

It was an apology that was long overdue, said Ms Banks. But it was still lacking given it came from a local commander rather than the Police Commissioner.

On Saturday, Ms Banks will once again take to the parade route riding on an open-top bus with her fellow 78ers.

As she passes Taylor Square, she’ll be able to glimpse the now closed police station where 40 years ago she and 22 other woman were thrown in and locked up in the middle of the night.

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