Mardi Gras parade route added to state heritage register

When the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade returns to Oxford Street this month after two years at the Sydney Cricket Ground, the route will be the same – but symbolically, it will have extra significance.

The NSW government has added the Oxford Street parade route to the state’s heritage register, in commemoration of its 45th anniversary and before what will be the city’s biggest Mardi Gras with Sydney also hosting the WorldPride festival.

The dykes on bikes - pictured here in 2017 - traditionally open the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade at the start of Oxford Street.Credit: James Brickwood

The heritage listing includes parts of Oxford Street, Flinders Street, Anzac Parade and Darlinghurst Road, as well as the Darlinghurst Police Station, where LGBTQ protesters were hauled to and detained in 1978, sparking the annual protest and pride parade now known as Mardi Gras.

For Peter de Waal – who was among the ’78ers who marched down (not up) Oxford Street – having that history, pain and injustice recognised through a heritage listing was “a kind of cleansing”.

“In those days it was a very lonely thing, although we were with hundreds of our comrades,” he said. “There was no other community, straight or gay, welcoming us on either side of the street.”

De Waal recalled that in later years, some Oxford Street hotels provided space to the mostly young gay men dying of HIV/AIDS. He said it was common for them to live to watch the Mardi Gras parade, only to succumb days later.

Peter de Waal (right) in 2017 with his late partner Peter Bonsall-Boone.Credit: Edwina Pickles

De Waal said the heritage listing was also recognition “for all the people who were there on the night and who were in the first parade but who can’t be with us anymore”.

NSW has added other routes to the heritage register before, including the convict-built Old Great North Road in Dharug National Park, Corduroy Road Ruin Historic Site and Cox’s Road and Early Deviations in the Blue Mountains.

Heritage Minister James Griffin said heritage listings were not just about protecting bricks and mortar but celebrating spaces and landscapes that shaped the state’s social and cultural history.

The first Mardi Gras significantly influenced changes in laws, attitudes and culture around Australia, Griffin said, and this should be acknowledged “even as Sydney continues to evolve and change”.

A protest outside Darlinghurst Police Station in 1978.

Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras chief executive Albert Kruger said Oxford Street and surrounds were deeply connected to the equality movement in Australia, and the listing was “an international statement on the importance of creating and protecting LGBTIQA+ spaces”.

State member for Sydney Alex Greenwich, who will use WorldPride to draw attention to ongoing discrimination against LGBTQ people in NSW laws, said the listing was a significant achievement, but there was more work to do.

“To really honour the legacy and the work of the ’78ers, that means we need to keep on doing law reform that removes discrimination against the LGBTI community. That is what their legacy was and that is what we, as elected representatives, need to keep delivering on,” Greenwich said.

“The work of the ’78ers back then and the injustice they experienced back then still has not been resolved, and that has been exposed by the [ongoing] special commission of inquiry [into LGBTQ hate crimes].”

The heritage listing will not prevent people from changing or redeveloping buildings along the parade route, as the only building included in the listing is the former Darlinghurst Police Station, which the City of Sydney plans to turn into an LGBTQ museum.

The listing also contains various exemptions which enable road upgrades and repairs to continue. The forthcoming Oxford Street cycleway is not affected – construction starts this year – and the listing would not preclude a future government from putting light rail up the street.

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