Australian Queer Archives
The Australian Queer Archives is a community-based non-profit organisation committed to the collection, preservation and celebration of material reflecting the lives and experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex LGBTI Australians. It is located in Melbourne. The Archives were established as an initiative of the 4th National Homosexual Conference, Sydney, August 1978, drawing on the previous work of founding President Graham Carbery. Since its establishment the collection has grown to over 200,000 items, constituting the largest and most significant collection of material relating to LGBT Australians and the largest collection of LGBT material in Australia, and the most prominent research centre for gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans and intersex history in Australia.
Collection
AQuA's collection includes a broad range of library, archive, museum and gallery material, including personal papers and organisational records, periodicals, books, posters, photographs, audio-visual, sound recordings, newspaper clippings, theses, articles and pamphlets, ephemera, badges, T-shirts, banners, objects, born digital objects, etc.The collection is strongest in holdings relating to the early gay liberation movement in Australian onwards ; however, the collection also includes earlier items such as a book of love poetry between two men from World War I and Monte Punshon's scrapbooks from the 1920s–1930s.
AQuA has also built up extensive collections relating to key aspects of LGBTI life in Australia, including: pride festivals such as Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, Midsumma and Feast Festival; HIV/AIDS education and activism; faith-based organisations in particular Christian groups and support groups; sporting organisations and events in particular Gay Games; leather, kink and BDSM.
AQuA also holds the largest collection of non-Australian LGBTIQ+ material in Australia, including material from the United States, England, Japan, China, Thailand, Indonesia, Vanuatu, Denmark, Sweden and New Zealand.
Personal papers and organisational records
The Archives' collection of over 300 archival collections includes many notable holdings, including the organisational records of the Daughters of Bilitis/Australasian Lesbian Movement; the Records of Society Five ; CAMP South Australia; Adelaide Homosexual Alliance; the Records of the National Homosexual Conferences of the 1970s and 1980s; the Records of the Homosexual Law Reform Coalition ; the records of publishers such as Sydney Star Observer, Wicked Women, OutRage, Gay Community News, Gayzette, BlackWattle Press, Sydney Gay Writers Collective, etc.; the records of religious groups such as Christ's Community Church, Uniting Network, Metropolitan Community Church, Acceptance, etc.The Archives also holds substantial collections of personal papers, including: entrepreneur Jan Hillier; HIV/AIDS activists and community workers Ian Goller and Bill Hathaway; academics Professor Dennis Altman; performers Noel Tovey; writers Bob Buckley, Dino Hodge, Sasha Soldatow, Lyn Palmer, and Barry Lowe; gay liberation activists such as Peter McEwan, John Langworthy, Chris Johnston, and Mother Boats ; transgender activists and performers such as Roberta Perkins, Jasper Laybutt, Rose Jackson, Bobbie Nugent, Linda Phillips, etc.; DJ's Stephen Allkins and Bill Morley; artists Eddy Hackenberg, Cayte Latta, Peter Tully; motor, leather and BDSM club records and personal papers of leathermen and leatherwomen such as Ken Hocking, Colin Simson, Noel Lewington, Roger Mann, Jasper Laybutt, Talisa Tulip, Gigi Legenhausen, etc.
Periodicals
The Archives holds more than 2100 titles, from community newspapers and magazines, to organisational newsletters and zines from across Australia, New Zealand, USA, UK, Indonesia, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, France, Switzerland, Sweden, Japan, Thailand etc. Approximately 25 titles have been indexed in whole or in part, amounting to over 14,000 article references. International holdings are particularly strong in 1970s–1980s activism, leather/BDSM, and pornography.Photographs
Amongst the over 40,000 photographic items, notable special collections include those of Tommy McDermott and Robert Albert Lott and Brian Cooke documenting camp life in Melbourne from the 1940s to the 1960s; photographer collections including those by John Storey, C.Moore Hardy, Cayte Latta, William Yang and Terrence Bell, and John Jenner documenting LGBT life in Sydney from the 1970s–2000s; Eddy Hackenberg, Sydney-based artist and documentary photographer; Bob Buckley, S/M writer, documenting S/M and leather culture in Australia and around the world; David Johnstone, documenting Mandala gay commune and the early Radical Faeries in Australia; Ulo Klemmer, documenting saunas and beats in Sydney; organisational photographic collections, such as those of Midsumma and ALSO Foundation; and photographic collections from LGBT newspapers, including Campaign, Brother Sister, B-News, Melbourne Star Observer, City Rhythm, and Klick, and Evolution Publishing, as well as a range of smaller collections of photographs in personal papers.Books
The Archives holds approximately 7000 books, with a focus on LGBT-related books published in Australia or by Australian authors. Non-Australian historiographical books are also collected as well as pre-1980 LGBT-related books, particularly those that were distributed or circulated in Australia. The Archives also holds a number of special 'formed' book collections, the Ardy Tibby Collection of Lesbian Fiction, the David McDiarmid Collection, the Ken Hocking Collection, Colin Simpson and Barry Lowe Collections. The Rare Books Collection holds items dating from the mid-19th century as well as association copies and artists' books.Posters
The Archives holds over 5,000 posters dating from the 1960s to the present. Posters cover a range of subject matter from dance parties to protests, HIV/AIDS education to LGBT pride festivals, as well as smaller holdings of posters on 'allied movements' such as women's and black liberation. Notable holdings include extensive material relating to the Sydney Mardi Gras, Feast Festival and Midsumma, including a comprehensive collection of posters from each festival as well as posters for protests surrounding the arrests of the first Mardi Gras in 1978. A number of special poster collections are held by the Archives, including the Ian Malloy Collection, documenting HIV/AIDS education and gay and lesbian protests; the Victorian AIDS Council, AIDS Council of SA, Melbourne Sexual Health Centre, Dennis Altman, and Mandy Martin Collections, documenting HIV/AIDS education in Australia and internationally; the Les Smith Collection, documenting his Brisbane-based DJ career; the Beige Design Collection, documenting their Melbourne-based design practice for the LGBT community; the David McDiarmid Collection, documenting his poster designs from 1972 onwards; the Grant Kilby Collection, which contains leather posters as well as original poster designed by Allan Booth; the Ron Muncaster and Ken Hocking Collections documenting leather and S/M events; venue collections from the Laird Hotel, Oxford Hotel, Stonewall Hotel, Midnight Shift, Options Nightclub, Mandate etc. Also amongst the collection are a large number are a number of posters printed and designed at community print workshops in the 1970s and 1980s, including posters produced at Earthworks Poster Collective, Redback Graphix, Redletter Press, Megalo Access Arts, Harridan Posters etc.Oral history and audio
The Archives' oral history and audio collections are extensive and include over 310 oral history recordings, over 1500 audio recordings from Australian LGBT radio programs and LGBT subjects on mainstream radio, and over 100 unpublished sound recordings including mixtapes and recordings of DJ sets, and over 50 published music recordings relating to LGBT music.The Oral History Collection documents the breadth of Australian LGBT life from across Australia, documenting early camp life from pre-WW2, the development of the gay liberation movement and later LGBT organisations and community activism. The collection has a strengths in documenting gay liberation and activists, but also holds a wealth of stories of everyday lesbians, gay men and trans men and women. Special collections include the John Lee Collection, which includes 34 oral history interviews recorded between 1978 and 1980, documenting camp life in Adelaide, SA, which includes 9 interviews with recollections from pre-WW2; the Dino Hodge Collection, which includes 19 recordings created in preparing his 1996 book The fall upward: spirituality in the lives of lesbian women and gay men; the Jim Wafer Collection, which includes interviews recorded for the Hunter Gay and Lesbian Bicentennial History Project in 1995–1996; and the Australian Leather Women's History Project, documenting women in the Australian leather and BDSM community.
The Archives also holds over 1500 audio recordings relating to gay and lesbian radio programmes, such as Gaywaves ; Gay Radio Information News Service, recorded at Radio 2SER, but distributed nationally; Gay Liberation Radio Collective ; Gay Viewpoint ; JOY 94.9, etc. Supplementing the audio recordings are a number of archival collections relating to gay radio programs, including Gaywaves, GRINS, and Inside Out, as well as the personal papers of members of program collectives, such as Sheril Berkovitch. Also included are a small number of off-air recordings of interviews relating to LGBT-subjects on mainstream radio programs.
The collection of about 100 mixtapes and DJ sets consists largely of recordings by DJ Stephen Allkins and Bill Morley, with some recordings by David McDiarmid.