I like words

2011-05-17T11:34:00.000-07:00

2011-05-17T11:33:00.000-07:00

Interviews
Kathryn Bonella: Hotel K
Australian journalist Kathryn Bonella talks about her new book 'Hotel K', a brutal look inside Bali's notorious Kerobokan Prison.
Kylie Minogue: All loved up
As she prepares to launch her 2010 album 'Aphrodite', Kylie talks about love, success and Googling herself
Tori Amos: Sinful attraction tour
Three part video interview: Tori discusses the church, homosexuality, inspiration and Australia
Soothing Spencer
In the lead up to his 2009 naked installation work at the Sydney Opera House, artist Spencer Tunick discusses beauty, authority and equality
Lisa Williams sees dead people
Well-known TV psychic Lisa Williams shares her views on the other side and the meaning of life
B-52s: Shiny happy people
Kate Pierson from the B-52s talks about love, life and longevity
Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!
David Bedella, the original Satan from Jerry Springer The Musical, explains how he rationalises his faith with his controversial stage role
Bea Smith: Still top dog
As legendary Aussie soap Prisoner celebrates its 30th anniversary, actress Val Lehman looks back over her TV career and laments the advent of reality television
Margaret Cho: You're beautiful
American comedian talks about standing up for yourself and the importance of feeling beautiful
Darren Hayes: On the verge of something wonderful
The ex-Savage Garden singer responds to being nominated one of Australia's most influential gays
Tori Amos: Living doll
In the lead up to her 2007 American Doll Posse Tour, the controversial songstress explores her multiple personalities
David Hoyle: Gay community or the largest suicide cult in history?
Confrontational comic genius unleashes his fury on the gay community, calling them "less than teenagers"

Feature articles

Something big is brewing in London
"You just can't get a good coffee in London." It's a very common refrain but it simply isn't true - you just have to know where to look.
Australia's new government: What it means for expats

Australia has a new female PM - London based spokespeople from Labor, Liberals and The Greens share their reactions to the new government.

Blurring the lines

An exploration of sexual violence, consent and the law

Sniffer dogs: Getting nosey

Analysis of NSW police use of sniffer dogs within the gay community

What's your poison?

Commentary on findings from 2009 Gay Census

Sydney: Is the party over?

A closer look at the rise of violence and the decline of Sydney's gay scene

Let's talk about sex

Commentary on findings from 2009 Gay Census

Fags and Phelps: An unlikely combination

How an ex-drag queen and the world's biggest homophobe became friends

Remember those who have fallen

An examination of transgender violence in Australia and around the world

Boys behind bars

What is life like for gay men in prison?

Travel

2011's hottest adventure travel destinations
Australia

Reviews
2011 Eurovision Song Contest
Holding The Man
B52s
Phantom of the Opera
The year of magical thinking
Lost and Found Orchestra
Volver

Opinion Editorials
Beige
And on the seventh day...
How very dare you
Eyes are blind
Why is it so?

Feel Your Heart Beat: Eurovision Song Contest 2011

2011-05-17T11:32:00.000-07:00

It’s been days since I was in Düsseldorf for the 2011 Eurovision Song Contest grand final and I am still on a total high. It’s hardly surprising. With 55 years of history, 35,000 arena spectators, 125 million television viewers, live voting and video link ups with 43 European countries, not to mention a non-stop display of some of the most camptastic pop around: it’s without a doubt the biggest, and certainly the gayest, live television event in the world.

Being in the arena watching it all unfold is like nothing I’ve ever experienced. For me, it felt like a delicious collision of other familiar moments: it had the pride, colour and fanfare of Mardi Gras; the tension and excitement of a Big Brother eviction and the hands in the air euphoria of every Kylie concert rolled into one. This year it was carried out with the precision that the Germans are famous for. I am hooked.

We arrived in Düsseldorf on a sunny spring day to streets packed with revellers, all waving their country’s flags. As a recent emigrant to the UK I felt that I should wave the union jack instead of the Australian flag, but I needn’t have worried – there were a number of Aussie flags waving in amongst the crowd. After meandering through cobblestone streets and gorging on sausage, we jammed onto a crowded tram and headed out to the arena.

I’d watched the semi-finals on BBC, but nothing could have prepared me for the scale of the event. It took us ten minutes just to walk around to the other side of the arena to get our tickets. Once inside, we were blown away not only by the size but also the energy of the crowd. The hosts came onto the stage to rapturous applause and promised us “a night of peace, unity and music”. This year the theme of Eurovision was “feel your heart beat!” and as the countdown began, the motto was brought to life inside the arena with a loud thumping heart beat and pulsing purple lights. Showtime.

After a brief introduction from the hosts, which to my delight included a shout out to viewers in Australia, we were away. Finland’s Paradise Oskar was the first participant to hit the stage, with a sweet song about saving the planet and a smile that lit up the room. Boznia and Herzegovina went down the traditional route with ‘Love In Rewind’. Denmark’s A Friend In London rocked the arena with plenty of hairspray, guyliner and backless shirts, while Lithuania’s Evelina Sašenko sang a gorgeous ballad ‘C'est Ma Vie’. As her song ended and she stepped down from the stage, my friend leaned over and whispered in my ear, “You know you’ve just witnessed the biggest three minutes of her life.”

Those words remained in my head for the rest of the show. It’s so easy to watch Eurovision at home and be tongue-in-cheek about it all, but when you’re there in the arena, you really ride the wave with the contestants.

My favourite moments from the rest of the show included: Hungary’s Kati Wolf, who had everyone up dancing with ‘What About My Dreams?’; Ireland’s twin duo Jedward who flooded the stadium with red glitter; Sweden’s Eric Saade with ‘Popular’ and Estonia’s Getter Jaani with ‘Rockefeller Street’. Blue’s anthem ‘I Can’ had us waving the union jack wildly, but later as we watched them slip down the scoreboard, we neatly folded the flag and sheepishly put it away.

It wouldn’t be Eurovision without the randomness, and that was provided in spades by Moldova, who wore traffic cone-esque hats, and had one band member on a unicycle. Meanwhile, Alexej Vorobjov from Russia provided the cheese with black leather jackets that lit up to spell ‘Alex’. And Ukraine’s Mika Newton belted out an amazing ballad called ‘Angel’ but was upstaged by the phenomenal sand artist who joined her onstage to provide the visual backdrop.

Of course, Azerbaijan were the eventual winners, prompting a mixed response from the crowd. “Where is Azerbaijan? Is it even part of Europe? Will they be able to put on an amazing show like Germany did?” Later, it occurred to me, given how gay Eurovision’s fan base is, are they likely to visit a country where homosexuality was only decriminalised in 2000?

Alfie Hanoun, editor of UK based music blog Alfitude.com, was in the crowd that night. He’s been a Eurovision fan for as long as he can remember. “I prefer going to see it live. It’s a totally different experience to watching it on TV. It’s such a big event all across Europe and you don’t realise it until you're there… It's also funny watching some of the freaks inventing outfits out of flags...”

Alfie says he’s “a bit gutted” that Azerbaijan won the contest.

“I thought there were better songs in the competition than theirs. Also, you can tell next year's show will be rubbish compared to this year. The German production as a whole was so impressive - the stage was huge, the presenters were really sharp and the scale of the contest was just massive.”

So why is Eurovision so big in Europe, and regarded as a bit of a joke elsewhere? Is it misunderstood?

“I don’t think so. It was never meant to be a 'cool' show,” says Alfie. “Right from the start it was meant to be something that got all of Europe together for one night. You can't help the poor quality of some of the songs, but even as a fan I think it would be really dull if all the songs were amazing. I just think that the UK, and possibly Australia for that matter, generally sees the rest of Europe as a bit of a strange place anyway, and with that comes Eurovision.”

Strange or not, experiencing a Eurovision final in the flesh is definitely something to do before you die. And like anything, you get out what you put in. If you come with an open mind, you leave with a full heart.

Published: SameSame.com.au

Something is brewing in London...

2011-03-31T08:35:00.000-07:00

“You just can’t get a good cup of coffee in London.” We’ve all heard this common refrain, particularly from Antipodeans. However, it’s simply not true – you just have to know where to go. London’s coffee culture is evolving fast and Aussies are proudly leading the charge. Christian Taylor sips an espresso with Jeffrey Young, author of the London Coffee Guide and the man behind London’s first ever Coffee Festival.

From the minute Jeffrey Young starts talking it’s obvious he’s a passionate man. Either that or he’s had one too many flat whites. Perhaps it’s a bit of both, and one would expect nothing less from a man who has devoted the last 3 years of his life to putting London’s coffee culture on the map. Young has penned the London Coffee Guide and is the founder of the Allegra Foundation, the organisation behind the first ever UK Coffee Week and London Coffee Festival. With so much on his plate, it’s no wonder he needs the caffeine.

“In a nutshell, the London Coffee Festival is a celebration of the amazing coffee that is starting to take shape in this city. It’s about bringing together aficionados: people who love coffee, love food, love the city of London and love where coffee is at at the moment.”

At the end of 2010, the UK coffee shop market was worth £5 billion. Allegra’s research with over 16,000 consumers found that 68% visited coffee shops at least once a week.

But it wasn’t always like this.

According to Young, 60 to 70% of the cafes featured in the London Coffee Guide didn’t even exist 3 years ago – most of them opened their doors just last year. Young says the Antipodean influence has played a key role in shaping Britain’s emerging new coffee culture. He mentions the importance of popular Soho and Fitzrovia cafes like Kaffiene, Flat White, Milk Bar and Sacred.

“I’ve been in the coffee industry for 12 years and I got tired of people, mostly Australians, telling me ‘I can’t find a good cup of coffee in London!’ Now I can just hand them the guide and say, ‘Go to one of these places’ and I guarantee you will not be disappointed by the overall coffee experience. It’s a great thing for this city. London’s coffee culture has now gotten to the point where it actually needs a guide.”

Monday April 4 marks the beginning of the first ever UK Coffee Week, which culminates in the London Coffee Festival from April 8 - 10. In addition to celebrating the best of the UK’s coffee industry, it will also raise funds for Project Waterfall, a charitable initiative established by Allegra Foundation to deliver clean water projects in coffee-producing African countries. The first project will be delivered in partnership with WaterAid to communities in the Mbulu District of Tanzania.

“I’ve always wanted to give back, and so I came up with the idea of getting cafes to add 5p to the price of each cup of coffee sold during UK Coffee Week. I think the British population are really giving, they really care. We just saw what happened with Red Nose Day for instance. 5p from each cup will raise a staggering amount of money for a fantastic cause.”

Young says 100% of funds raised will go to the charity, along with all proceeds from tickets sold to the London Coffee Festival.

Young says the festival will bring together coffee, food, education, charity and entertainment all under the one roof.

“There’ll be an array of chain operators and edgy independents, world barista champions - a collection of the most influential people from the coffee industry will be there, many of them will be making coffee and interacting with consumers. We’ve got a tremendous education program too, including lectures and demonstrations from industry leaders.”

MOBO award winner and X Factor finalist John Adeleye will headline the festival’s music program, which includes a number of unsigned acoustic artists. A highlight will be the launch of ‘Coffee’, a song written especially for UK Coffee Week.

“We’re also aiming to beat a Guinness World Record for the most espressos made in an hour on the Saturday. The current record is 3,386 espressos in one hour, by 86 baristas on 20 machines in Poland on 4 March 2010. This is being challenged by a team of Australian baristas who made 5,016 in under an hour on 7 October 2010. We want to beat this!” If you’re a barista who’s up for the challenge, you can register online at http://www.ukcoffeeweek.com/.

There’s no doubt about it, Young has a competitive streak. In addition to smashing the Guinness World Record, he’s also got Sydney’s coffee festival in his sights.

“As it’s our first year, we’re expecting 10,000 people at the festival. These days, Sydney’s coffee festival attracts 90,000. I think London can do better than that! Don’t you?”

London Coffee Festival is at The Old Truman Brewery, Brick Lane, from 8-10 April 2011. Tickets available at http://www.londoncoffeefestival.com/. To purchase the London Coffee Guide, visit http://www.londoncoffeeguide.com/.

Published: Australian Times, Issue 355, 5 March 2011.

Hotel K: On the inside

2011-02-09T08:24:00.000-08:00

In 2004, Australian journalist Kathryn Bonella was sent to Bali to cover one of the biggest stories Australia had ever seen – the trial of Schapelle Corby. Schapelle was eventually found guilty of drug smuggling and sentenced to life in Kerobokan Prison. Convinced of her innocence, Bonella moved to Indonesia in 2005 to research and write Schapelle’s bestselling autobiography, My Story. Now, nearly 7 years later, Bonella is releasing her second book, which takes us behind the bars of this notorious prison where three of the Bali Nine currently sit on death row, which once housed the Bali Bombers - a place Bonella quite simply calls ‘a hell hole’.

“I used to be quite cynical, and thought ‘you do the crime, you do the time’, but writing this book has softened my view,” says Bonella. “Meeting prisoners like the Bali Nine, I do have a lot of sympathy for them. Yes, they were stupid young kids and they deserve punishment, but they also deserve another chance in life.”

In her book Hotel K, Bonella describes life at Kerobokan Prison in all its lurid detail: a prisoner trades her baby for a bag of drugs, a furniture factory is a front for a jail yard ecstasy lab, guards triple their salaries by organising sex night orgies, beach days out and room upgrades. Most inmates are forced to share cramped and disease-ridden cells with no segregation: petty thieves and small-time drug mules sleep alongside paedophiles and rapists.

“Rats run in and out of the cells - they crawl around people’s heads while they’re sleeping - there are snakes... The sewers often fill up and block, the squat toilets overflow into the cells. It’s massively overcrowded: a lot of junkie prisoners are dying of tuberculosis, there’s HIV in there, prisoners are shooting up... It’s an absolute hell hole.”

Some prisoners manage to bribe their way into more luxurious settings.

“One prisoner’s cell had a plasma screen, satellite TV and a Bose sound system,” says Bonella. “He even knocked a wall out and made the general bathroom his private en-suite... Anything can be bought. Sling the guards a bit of cash and you can have pizza, beer or even drugs delivered to your cell door.”

Bonella says it wasn’t difficult to get people to open up to her.

“I really found that people were keen to talk. They’d been stuck in prison for years, some were quite lonely. I spent a lot of time with these people, especially the main characters in the book. I built up good relationships with them, and am still in touch with a few.”

In an effort to verify the stories, Bonella often interviewed a number of prisoners and consulted other sources, like newspaper archives and other journalists.

“I asked a number of prisoners the same questions – they almost always tallied exactly. There’s so much crazy stuff going on in there that people don’t need to embellish.”

In addition to the high profile prisoners like Schapelle Corby and the Bali Nine, Bonella said there’s a steady stream of Aussies passing through the prison.

“They’re regularly coming in and out for small amounts of drugs... There was a guy in there who was accused of paedophilia and he was waiting to be extradited, there was an Aussie DJ quite a while ago. There’s a revolving door of westerners. They’ll get busted with a bit of drugs on them, pay off the system and then get out.”

Unfortunately for Schapelle things weren’t that simple. Bonella describes being in Bali for the verdict as ‘phenomenal’.

“If you were in Australia at the time, you were in the minority if you didn’t stop to watch the verdict on TV. Everyone saw every quiver of her bottom lip, every bead of sweat on her forehead, and the excruciating shock of her hearing ‘20 years’. When the verdict went down, that courtroom was just electric. It was just incredible.”

Afterwards, Bonella and the rest of the 60 Minutes crew went back to a villa to interview the family.

“The adrenalin was pumping, they were devastated, angry, upset – they did a firey interview. To be in the middle of all that – the biggest story in Australia, certainly for a long time – was phenomenal. It was hard not to feel for the family - they were grieving. 20 years is a long time in this Bali prison. It’s no surprise to me that Schapelle’s lost it – I don’t know how you’d survive a week in there.”

I ask Bonella if she still believes Schapelle is innocent.

“I do get asked that all the time. My opinion is that she’s innocent. I understand now that’s a minority view. A lot of people say to me, ‘I think she did it, but I think 6 years has been long enough. It’s time to let her go.’ That’s the attitude of most Australians I speak to. I think she’s innocent. I’m not going to say why.”

As for the Bali Nine, Andrew Chan, Scott Rush and Myuran Sukumaran are awaiting the verdict of their appeal against the death penalty.

“If this fails, they’ll have to seek clemency, but the Indonesian President has never granted clemency to death row inmates for drugs. So if this appeal fails, it’s not looking good for them.”

Bonella said that the discrepancies between the sentences handed down to Scott Rush and Renae Lawrence is a perfect example of the inconsistency and unpredictability of the Indonesian justice system.

“Scott Rush was one of the 4 couriers busted at the airport. He had the least amount of heroin strapped to him and it was the first time he’d done it, while Renae admitted to having done it before. She got 20 years, the other 2 are on life and Scott inexplicably is still sitting on death. He doesn’t understand why. With remissions Renae will be out in 10 years. Scott’s facing a 12 man sniper firing squad.”

Bonella said that Rush, Chan and Sukumaran are ‘not in a good way’.

“Scott goes up and down a lot. He’s a nice kid: very regretful, very lost. They’re living every day with a death sentence on their shoulders. It’s pretty tough.”

In amongst the wreckage of all these broken lives, Bonella there are still glimmers of hope.

“They try to do little things to make themselves feel normal: Scott Rush’s mum bought him a vacuum cleaner; for a while Schapelle had a little dog that Mercedes bought in for her; Renae got a proper bed in her cell; most of them have mobile phones, they have visits twice a day. They try to create a life. They have to. They have no choice.”

Kathryn Bonella’s Hotel K is available in the UK through Amazon, Waterstones, Tesco, Quercus Books and WH Smith.

Published: Australian Times, Issue 348, 15 February 2011.

2011's hottest adventure travel destinations

2011-01-25T08:33:00.000-08:00

A lot can change in a year, particularly in the world of adventure travel. So what are the world’s hottest, most in-demand destinations in 2011? We spoke to Wild Frontiers and The Adventure Company, two of the UK’s leading adventure travel companies, to find out.

“We specialise in destinations that are hard to get to,” says Marc Leaderman, Head of Operations at Wild Frontiers. “We run group trips that are capped at 12 people – that’s rare these days. Smaller groups mean easier access to more unique experiences, like getting inside people’s houses, going into small villages… Fundamentally, we’re all about pushing the boundaries, and giving travelers authentic experiences.”

Syria
“There was a time when Syria appeared on the ‘axis of evil’, although in Britain we’ve always had good relations with Syria,” says Marc. His company has been receiving lots of enquiries to this part of the world. His theory is that travelers have gone to more popular places like Jordan, and they’ve returned feeling that it wasn’t as exotic as they were hoping.

“But Syria definitely delivers. I don’t think we’ve ever received a complaint about Syria.”

Marc says that highlights include palaces that have been converted into boutique hotels in places like Damascus and Aleppo; amazing ruins, busy souks, great shopping and amazing deserts. Travelers can also stay in traditional Bedouin tents.

“Because Syria receives less tourism than other Middle Eastern countries like Egypt and Jordan, the people are incredibly welcoming, there’s a lot less hassle.

You can fly direct with BMI. Take a week off and explore the whole country.

Best time to go: Between Mar – May, or Sep – Nov
Estimated costs: Group tours start at £1710 + £550 for flights

Mozambique
“The country is divided in two: the southern part is well developed, particularly with South Africans going on holidays, but the north and north east is completely undeveloped,” says Marc. “Here you’ll find a few top-end eco-lodges. They’re not cheap, but they are built on concessions with private beaches. We’ve just taken a luxury camping group out there - they stayed on a remote island and were the only people there. They came back and said they’d never been on a camping trip like it.”

Marc says there was a separate boat for the camping equipment, guests stayed in walk-in tents with showers and toilets - they even had their own barman who followed them around the island!

“It’s super top end, rivaling the best you’d find in places like the Seychelles. Some of these places just have 6 or 7 rooms. They have the most beautiful beaches, some of the world’s best snorkeling and diving. It’s paradise.

Unfortuately there are no direct flights from the UK – flights go via Johannesburg or Nairobi and aren’t daily.

Best time to go: between Mar – May (to avoid the hurricane season!) and Sep – Nov – a great escape from the UK cold.
Estimated costs: 16 days from £2000 – 12 days from £2995 + £950 for flights

India
“This is such a big destination, it’s hard to pin point specific places to go,” says Marc. “India is growing phenomenally as a tourist destination – not just westerners, but also domestic tourism because of India’s bourgeoning middle class. So while our trips take you to the well known spots, we also aim to get away from the tourists.” These off the beaten track locations include Gujarat and the tribal lands of Orissa. “We’ve just put on a new trip to the north east, the part that borders Burma.”

Marc says that he sees a lot of people going back to India time and time again, some return as many as five times.

“We’ve found if people like India, they like it a lot!

Best time to go: Sep – March
Estimated costs: It varies greatly, but a 2 week break could start at £2000 + £450 for flights

Yemen
“This used to be a standard destination in the 90s, and then problems beset the country. The British Foreign Office advises against travel to Yemen, due to the threat of terrorism, kidnapping and tribal violence, so people find it hard to get travel insurance,” says Marc. “But we operate differently to other companies. We’ve negotiated special insurance rates for our clients, and we’ve been running trips to Yemen safely for the last 3 years.”

Marc says group itineraries are submitted to the local police, and during some legs of the trip there is added security. “We travel in small groups and have never had any problems. All our groups come back from Yemen loving it.”

Marc describes Yemen as “a stunning destination”.

“The capital itself, the old city of Sana’a, is a UNESCO heritage site, with thousands of tower houses 7 or 8 stories high. Some date back 500-600 years. It’s like no other capital city in the whole world.”

Other highlights include spectacular walking trips, coffee plantations in the south and an island named Socotra which is referred to as ‘the Galapagos of the Indian Ocean’, mainly because of the unique flora and fauna.

“There have never been any problems there. You can camp on the beaches, walk in the mountains… There’s also a place in the east called Shibam which is known as ‘the Manhattan of the desert’. It has skyscraper buildings made out of mud brick which tower out of the desert. It’s almost like a medieval Vegas - utterly amazing.”

Best time to go: Sep - March
Estimated costs: 14 days from £2400 + £450-500 for flights

Pakistan
This is another location that comes with a warning from the British Foreign Office. “Our trips don’t contravene this advice,” says Marc. “The north of the country is the most stunning mountain scenery you will find anywhere on the planet. Four mountain ranges come together, and as you drive you see such different changes in scenery. The people there are incredibly resilient, especially after the floods that happened there last year…”

Marc said that tourists to this part of the world get the most amazing welcome.

“We have trips that offer unique experiences, like having tea with local maharajas, being invited inside palaces, riding around in open top jeeps – it’s a real adventure.”

Best time to go: March – October
Estimated costs: 18 days from £2000 + £550 for flights

“These days, people are expecting more from their holidays. An adventure holiday is all about understanding the country you’re going to, getting under the skin of it,” says James Ingham, Marketing Director for The Adventure Company. “Towards the end of last year, we asked over 8000 people where they would most like to go in 2011 and we found quite a few surprises.”

Northern Lights
“This was the most surprising one, it has come from nowhere for us really,” says James. “It seems like astronomy/star gazing has become a big culture. I think the Brian Cox show ‘Stargazing’ on BBC has popularized it. It’s suddenly jumped to the top of people’s wish lists.”

James says that it may be a case of people realizing how accessible the Northern Lights are.

“You can see the lights from quite a few locations, like Norway, Alaska, Canada… We run trips to Northern Iceland, which is a remote, snowy playground, so you can go on snowmobiles and go cross country skiing too. The lights are visible all year round, but they are best in the winter months when it’s darker for longer.”

Best time to go: Jan, Mar – Apr, and Sep to Oct, depending on the country.
Estimated costs: 8 day group trip is £1189 incl. flights, transfers, breakfasts, accommodation.

Machu Picchu
“The Inca Trail is on most people’s list of things to do before they die. It’s always been a popular favourite,” says James. “The key thing to know is that you need a permit to walk on the Inca Trail, and only around 500 people can be on the Inca Trail at any one time. About 300 passes are taken up by working staff, so you can only really get about 200 passengers from all over the world a day on the Inca Trail. The demand is quite high. We recommend booking 3 months in advance.”

James says a big part of the appeal is the sense of achievement that comes from trekking high in the Andes.

“We offer a special trek where you get to watch the sun rise over Machu Picchu. This also means the group gets the trail to themselves for a few hours before all the tourists arrive and fill the place up.”

Best time to go: Jun – Aug (Apr and Sep are quieter, but wetter)
Estimated costs: 10 days from £1900 incl. all flights, transfers, accommodation, all meals on trail, all breakfasts

The Himalaya
“This part of the world has a reputation for being pretty tough, and for hardened mountaineers, which is unsurprising since it’s the largest mountain range in the world, and has 12 of the world’s highest peaks,” says James. “However, with the advent of the adventure travel genre it’s opened up to a lot more people.”

James says that this is now his company’s number one destination. They sent almost 1000 people there last year, and they’ve seen 60% growth to Nepal in recent years.

“People see Mount Everest as one of those things they want to do before they die. However, climbing Mt Everest costs £30,000 and there’s a lot of training required – it’s a massive project. However, a trip to Everest base camp is about £1000, so it’s much more accessible. For most people, it’s as close as they’re going to get.”

Best time to go: Mar – mid-May, Sep – mid-Nov
How much will it cost: 18 days from £1600 + incl. flights

The Galapagos
“This is another perennial favourite - it’s the world’s number 1 wildlife destination. The numbers are controlled and the animals are very tame - they don’t really know how to interact with humans because they see so little of them. They’re just not bothered, they walk around you.”

James says that each island offers a completely different experience.

“Trips involve being out on boats, stopping off on different islands, going on ‘walking safaris’, going snorkeling with sea lions swimming around you – these are really unique experiences. This is also where Darwin’s theory of evolution developed. It can be quite expensive though, so it tends to be one of those ‘once in a lifetime’ things to do.”

Best time to go: Opinions differ, but Apr – May the water is warm, seas are calm and the high tourist season (Jun – Sep, Nov – Apr) is yet to begin.
How much will it cost: 13 days from £3000 all incl.

Angkor Wat
“Thailand came into vogue as a destination 15 years ago, then it was Vietnam, then Cambodia. Now Laos is opening up and building an infrastructure to accept western tourists,” says James. “Cambodia’s been around on the circuit for about 10 years now and it didn’t have much of an infrastructure for the first five. These days it has fairly good rest houses and places to stay, and some of the sites are very ‘Indiana Jones-like’, with temples in the middle of the jungle, vines climbing all over the walls, very ornate carvings. It’s a pretty spectacular place.”

James says that the trips his company runs to this part of the world include Angkor Wat, as well as cultural experiences. “We spend time in the rainforests, we go to fishing ports, it’s a real mixture of culture and wildlife.”

Best time to go: Nov - Jan

How much will it cost: 16 days from £1900 all incl.

Published: Australian Times, Issue 345, 25 January 2011.

Australia's new government: What it means for expats

2010-09-14T15:46:00.000-07:00

With reaction to the new Gillard government split along party lines, the UK spokespeople for Labor, the Greens and the Liberal Party can at least agree on one thing – it’s going to be a government unlike any other.

“We know the result was on a knife edge,” Paul Smith, President of ALP Abroad, told Australian Times, “but we could have ended up with a climate change denier as our Prime Minister. That would have been an embarrassment.”

Smith remains optimistic, despite claims that the new government will be ‘fragile’, citing proposed policies on the national broadband network, climate change and the economy as some of their key strengths. “It’s a fantastic result. I’m also very proud of our first female Prime Minister.”

Smith likens the situation to John Curtin’s term as Prime Minister during World War II. Facing a hung parliament, Labor managed to gain a majority with the support of two independents. “Curtin was able to provide stable and visionary leadership during the darkest days Australia ever faced and went forward to win the 1943 election by the largest victory Labor has ever achieved. Julia Gillard, like John Curtin, will provide the leadership that Australia needs.”

However, Jason Groves, President of the UK Liberal branch, isn’t so convinced.

“Obviously I am very disappointed with the outcome. It will be very difficult for Labor’s coalition to maintain stable government for three years, with the Greens on one side, and essentially independents from conservative rural constituencies on the other. I think that’s going to be a very substantial challenge.”

Mat Hines, London Campaign Coordinator of the Australian Greens, said that this combination is what makes the new government so exciting.

“It’s a big move forward for progressive politics. For the first time in recent history no party controls the decision-making processes. As a result, the diverse range of views of the Australian community, as represented by their MPs and senators, will have to be considered. The new government is a much more inclusive, fairer form of democracy.”

According to Hines, the coalition has started making headway on a number of progressive issues. “These include a commitment to high-speed rail and a price on carbon, a referendum on constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians, a full parliamentary debate on Afghanistan and moves towards free dental care.”

Hines believes that the new government has the potential to give Australian expats leadership that they can be proud of. He said that many expats were embarrassed by the image of Australia that the Howard government created internationally, and that Labor has come part of the way in remedying that.

Hines added: “Expats will be watching to see how the new government deals with international issues such as climate change, asylum seekers and the war in Afghanistan, and domestic issues such as same-sex equality and improving the living conditions of Indigenous Australians.”

Smith echoed Hines’ sentiments. “When you are living overseas you want to be proud of your country while you’re away, and (have) economic opportunity when you return. These are things the Gillard government offers, and what the Abbott coalition could not.”

Groves disagrees, pointing out the very strong swing towards Liberal in London, which was reflected in Australian Times’s exit poll. “Clearly expats thought the Labor government had not enhanced Australia’s reputation internationally… I think there’ll be disappointment at this result… Liberals were the party with the most number of seats and the most number of primary votes by a very substantial margin”.

Groves believes that the next budget will be a real test of the government’s commitment, and what voters can expect from the years to come. “What does it mean for economic policy or for taxation policy? It could mean taxes going up in a whole range of areas that we didn’t expect.”

Published: Australian Times, Issue 327, 14 September 2010.

Kylie Minogue: All loved up

2010-06-23T19:15:00.000-07:00

I meet Kylie Minogue on an overcast Tuesday afternoon in the sumptuous surroundings of Blakes Hotel in South Kensington, London. I say a quick hello to her as she walks down the hall towards a hotel suite where TV cameras are waiting. Her long time manager Terry Blamey pulls me aside.

“Have you heard the album yet?” he asks. I tell him that I’ve only heard what has been doing the rounds on the internet. He whisks me upstairs to a hotel suite, sits me down and plugs in his iPod dock. “I’ll be back in an hour. Order anything you want on room service,” he says, and the door closes.

I toy with the idea of ordering up big on the Minogue credit card, but instead opt for a bottle of Perrier. I gaze out the window as I listen toAphrodite, Kylie’s eleventh studio album. The grey rooftops of London and the even greyer sky above seem an odd backdrop for such a euphoric record. Even on first listen the overarching theme is abundantly clear – this album is all about love.

Before too long Terry is back, and together we head down to the hotel bar where I am reunited with Kylie. In many ways, she is much as you expect her to be. She’s ever so friendly, tiny, and impeccably presented in a red fitted dress, chunky wedge heels and gold jewelry. Her hair falls effortlessly past her shoulders. She’s halfway through telling someone a story, which involves her doing a few impromptu dance moves in the middle of the bar. The two old ladies at the table nearby don’t bat an eyelid. We take a seat next to each other in a tastefully lit corner surrounded by cushions and silk. I tell her I’ve just been upstairs listening to the album.

“How do you feel?” she asks. I tell her I love it.

“Spuds and sparkles!” she says, holding a clenched fist out to me. “Come on!” She grabs my hand, I form a fist, and she teaches me a secret handshake. ‘Spuds’ – we punch fists, ‘sparkles’ – we trail our fingers through the air. “Sparkle it out y’all,” she grins.

Kylie tells me that she’s in a ‘really good space’ at the moment, and it shows. Aphrodite has hit written all over it, she’s in a great relationship with 32 year old Spanish model Andres Velencoso, she’s about to become an aunt for the third time and if her music, home furnishings and fragrances are anything to go by, she seems to have the Midas touch. I ask her how people have been responding to All The Lovers so far.

“Amazingly,” she beams. “It felt right. I had faith in my conviction that it was the right move.” She graciously gives credit to the album’s executive producer Stuart Price, who has worked with the likes of Madonna and The Killers, saying that his involvement made all the difference.

“Working with Stuart was just so lovely. I was practically praying that he would be able to do this project with me, and when he came onboard it all started to make sense. He made it a happy experience, because it wasn’t like that in the beginning. I was a bit confused and bewildered and I thought ‘oh no, I don’t know what I’m doing’.”

Kylie loves her latest video, directed by Joseph Kahn, in which hundreds of gorgeous boys and girls strip down to their underwear and make out with one another, literally forming an orgiastic pyramid with Kylie at the top. She calls it ‘genuine, lovely’ and a ‘wonderful representation’ of the intentions behind the song.

“It’s a little out there but it’s not crass, it’s not overt. I’m sure I could show my grandmother and she’d say ‘oh, that’s nice!’” she chuckles. “The funny thing for me was that I didn’t get to know people further down the pyramid… it’s like life isn’t it? So I was stuck up there, just chatting with peeps and whatever, and I knew that there were a couple of guys who were a couple, but they had to make out with other girls… and then there were girls who were kissing, and I was thinking, is she the girlfriend of another girl or with a guy? There are probably lots of stories behind what you see in the video. It was very mixed.”

Talking about the video triggers a memory for Kylie, and she tells me about a photo she recently saw on Twitter from gay pride in West Hollywood.

“Someone got about maybe nine mannequins, and they’re in the pyramid formation with me at the top, and they’ve got the outfits done, and it’s on a rooftop, and they’ve used lyrics from the song too – “don’t be frightened… if love is really good you just want more”. I loved it. I just thought ‘brilliant!’” Kylie tells me that she would dearly love to see an ‘All The Lovers’ flash mob. I remind her of a recent Sydney flash mob, where a crowd of gays, led by drag queen Joyce Maynge, took over Bondi Beach as Your Disco Needs You played. “Yes, I remember that! That was great. I mean, drag queens on the beach, genius.”

Conversation turns to fame, and whether Kylie has ever googled herself. “Yes, I have. It’s a dangerous thing to do. Now there’s Twitter – it took me a while to get going on that, but I’m quite good at it now. It saves me from having to go down the dangerous road of googling, which can be so disheartening.” I ask her how she copes with the endless chatter out in cyberspace and the tabloids. “I don’t even go to the chatter. I mean, if there’s a news story I’ll read it online, but I will get to the end of the article and I refuse to go any further.” She pauses for breath and stares blankly, as though recalling an unpleasant memory. “Yeah, it’s just not good for you… at all. So yeah, I stop there.”

When asked about her biggest career highlight, her thoughts return to the Sydney Olympics in 2000.

“It seems like a long time ago now, but the Olympics were pretty amazing. It was pre 9/11, and sure there are always security issues with Olympics, but our country had the luxury of being a really joyful place to be. You take the energy of Australia, the energy of Sydney, the energy of the arena – and then to be at the centre of that even for just a few moments… it was kind of legendary. I did feel very proud to be there.”

I tell Kylie one of our Same Samers wants to know her thoughts on gay marriage. “Well, I think it should be allowed! I mean, how many countries have caught up with it by now?” I draw a blank, and tell her ‘a handful, but that the UK is a great example of a society that has moved forward in this direction and it’s worked’. “Exactly, the earth didn’t cave in. It’s like what’s represented in the All The Lovers video. If it’s love, it’s love. And that’s it. That’s all that matters.”

It’s hard to argue with that.

Published: SameSame.com.au, 28 June 2010 and Australian Times, Issue 317, 6 July 2010.

Kylie Minogue: From pop princess to love goddess

2010-06-01T19:14:00.000-07:00

Some days, Kylie must really feel like she’s done it all: singer, songwriter, actress, record producer, fashion designer, author, entrepreneur and philanthropist, as well as selling her own lines of bedding and fragrances. She’s sold more than 68 million albums worldwide, and has received many notable music awards, including multiple Brit Awards and a Grammy. She has been awarded an OBE "for services to music", received an Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2008, as well as a Mo Award for "Australian Entertainer of the Year" for her live shows. In March 2010, she was declared the "most powerful celebrity in Britain".

Not one to stay still for too long, Kylie has returned with her eleventh studio album, ‘Aphrodite’. It’s her first album in three years, and she’s quick to tell us how proud she is of the finished product.

“The last two albums ‘X’ and ‘Body Language’ had really great moments but they didn’t really connect overall like ‘Fever’ and ‘Light Years’ did,” says Kylie. “With this album, we wanted all the wheels to be turning at the same time. And we got there.”

There’s not a single ballad on ‘Aphrodite’. It has a thumping dance vibe throughout, which is largely due to her collaborators, some of the world’s current dance aces, like Stuart Price, Calvin Harris, and Swedish House Mafia’s Sebastian Ingrosso. The album is being dubbed the return to her “dancefloor roots”, not that she ever left, really. When asked if she’s a dance music fan herself, her eyes light up.

“Yes, I like all sorts really. I tend to buy dance compilations, so you get the best of everything that’s out there.” She says she’s particularly excited about the impact French DJ David Guetta is having. “His music has just kicked off and I love it! It’s really good quality dance music that’s around at the moment, and the way that’s translated into mainstream pop nowadays, especially in the States, is good news for me.”

Perhaps David Guetta is paving the way for Kylie to have another crack at America? She has had some success across the pond, mainly with her ‘Fever’ album back in 2001. Last year, The Wall Street Journal described her as "an international superstar who seems perpetually unable to conquer the US market." Unperturbed, she mounted her first ever American tour that year, playing to packed houses in San Francisco, New York and LA.

“I’m glad I did that,” she says, “Now when I go back there to promote, I feel like I’m not just floating around.” She admits that she doesn’t have a big audience in America, “but that isn’t stopping me from going there, because I love the audience I do have.”

At 42, the singer looks fresh, happy and fulfilled. She’s living proof that ‘you’re only as young as the man you feel’ - she’s dating gorgeous Spanish model Andres Velencoso, who is ten years her junior. Her eyes are bright, she’s smiling and her skin is flawless. Her 2005 cancer ordeal seems a distant memory. She’s less than a year away from getting her five year all-clear from doctors. Now her sister Dannii is almost due to give birth to her first child, and Kylie says she couldn’t be happier for her.

“When it comes to the two nephews I already have, I am uncontrollable. Nobody else exists. To know there’s another one on the way is thrilling.” She admits that she always wanted to be a mother, but thinks it may be too late for her. “Still, when I think about my nephews, I can’t imagine what it is to have your own children because I couldn’t love them any more.”

Despite her long list of achievements, there is one mountain yet to climb – creating a ‘Mamma Mia!’ style West End production with her creative partner and gay husband William Baker.

“It’s a project that’s going to take time. It would only go out if it was right - I don’t want to be savaged by the critics.” She says that the idea has a lot of potential, and that William has more experience under his belt now, after directing ‘Rent’ in the West End, and the sexy burlesque ‘Polly Rae Show’. “It would have to have my style, but not be a show about me specifically. I would love to get it right, because I love going to see shows.”

In the meantime, Kylie has the new album, and a 2011 world tour to keep her busy.

“That’s the hardest part of my job, I think. You’ve got to go out there, you’ve got to promote your album, you want to take it to the people and you wish there was more than 24 hours in a day.”

Still, as busy as she is, this dynamo shows no signs of slowing down just yet.

Published: GT Magazine, August 2010.

Holding The Man: Trafalgar Studios, May 6 2010.

2010-05-06T15:26:00.000-07:00

After a number of sold-out seasons in Australia and a stint in San Francisco, Tommy Murphy's adaptation of Timothy Conigrave's best selling memoir 'Holding The Man' has opened in London's West End. This play is truly a brutal, yet intoxicating night in the theatre, one which takes audiences through the full gamut of emotions - laughter, love, anger and gut-wrenching tragedy.

Holding The Man tells the story of Melbourne boys Tim Conigrave (Guy Edmonds) and John Caleo (Matt Zeremes). The two meet at high school in the mid-1970s. Tim is in the school production of Romeo & Juliet and has a crush on John, captain of the football team who wants to play for Essendon. By the end of high school even their yearbook acknowledges them as the year’s cutest couple. The play is a breathtakingly honest, heart-wrenching account of a 15-year relationship that weathered disapproval, separation, temptation and, ultimately, death.

The first half of the show is a charming, funny love story, and as Tim and John are falling for each other, so are you falling for them, which makes the dénouement all the more crushing when it finally arrives. Despite being Australia in the 70s, when being gay was still illegal, their love blossoms with relatively little resistance from those around them, although we get a taste of the homophobia of the time from John’s father (Simon Burke), especially towards the end of the play.

While John pursues a career as a chiropractor, Tim has his heart set on becoming an actor, and studies at NIDA, the Sydney drama school where the likes of Judy Davis and Mel Gibson learned their trade. Surrounded by free love and student politics, Tim starts to question his relationship with John and eventually the two split. It’s here that the joy and innocence of act one starts to give way to a darker, tragic second act where, against the backdrop of the HIV epidemic, the pair discover they are HIV positive. John becomes ill first, and we eventually see him crumble before our very eyes.

The play has some confronting moments - one highlight is when John is on his death bed struggling to breathe and his wheezing grows so loud that his mother tells him in Kath Day-Knight tones, “will you shut up John, we’re trying to get some sleep!” It’s a beautifully dysfunctional family moment, breaking the tension long enough for the audience to catch their breath. However, it’s not long before the auditorium is filled with muffled sounds of people fighting back tears; some are sniffling, others openly weeping. The steep rake at Trafalgar Studios is made to feel all the more steeper by an audience so riveted, so invested, that they are literally leaning in on themselves.

The most powerful blow comes in the final seconds of the show when Tim delivers a monologue to a now deceased John. "I fall in love so easily now," he says, "I guess the hardest thing is having so much love for you and it somehow not being returned. I develop crushes all the time, but that is just misdirected need for you. You are a hole in my life, a black hole. Anything I place there cannot be returned. I miss you terribly."

Jane Turner, of ‘Kath & Kim’ fame, leads the excellent supporting cast, and her inclusion is such a stroke of genius, one wonders why she wasn’t the first choice in Australia. Director David Berthold takes full advantage of her sketch comedy abilities, and she breathes life into a range of characters, from mothers to nightclub sleaze bags, from a grey haired drama school academic to a lesbian university student. There are many more strings to her bow than just ‘Kath & Kim’ which she is most famous for in the UK. Simon Burke also dons many hats, the most notable being the disapproving, meddling Mr Caleo, who refuses to acknowledge Tim as his son’s partner, and even argues over individual items in John’s will, reminding Tim, “some things are only fair.”

This is not the kind of play you’d expect to see on the West End, and it’s a brave move on the part of the producers to mount it. That being said, the show set box office records in Australia, and the memoir on which it is based is an Australian cult classic. Some moments may have audiences squirming in their seats, like when Tim confides in a friend about his first time having anal sex, or when his group of friends masturbate together in their sleeping bags while on a camping trip. But these raw moments are what makes this play so seductive and real.

This is a play about HIV. This is a play about homosexuality. But first and foremost this is a play about love, and its true magic lies in its universality - this is a show about the meaning of life. The story of these two star crossed lovers is one you will carry with you for a long time to come.

Published: London Fringe Review, May 6, 2010.

Australia

2010-05-01T15:17:00.000-07:00

Australia is big – really big. It’s more than 31 times the size of the UK and a trip from east to west coasts takes 66 hours by train, and at least five hours by plane. It’s far away from just about everywhere. Flights from UK to Sydney add up to about a day of travel time. The upside to this of course, is that when you finally do Australia, you really do it. Travelers hit the country like a series of waves, either working their way from south to north, or vice versa, before heading into the outback. Don’t be surprised if most city dwellers you meet have never been there.

Make a new year’s resolution.
Due to time zones, Australia is one of the first countries to celebrate new year, and few put on a fireworks display as spectacular as Sydney’s. It’s the perfect time to visit – you get to trade the English winter for the Australian summer.

One of the country’s best kept secrets is New Year’s Eve in Lismore. This quaint country town of about 30,000 people is nestled in the northern rivers district of NSW, just a short flight from Sydney. At first glance it looks like any other Aussie town, but on New Year’s Eve it’s transformed into a gay mecca by Tropical Fruits (http://www.tropicalfruits.org.au/). This dance party attracts literally thousands from all over the world, offering a friendly vibe, eye-popping costumes, three dance halls, world class DJs and a sexy men’s space. Afterwards revelers move to the local swimming pool, where it’s not unusual to see drag queens leaping from diving boards in full regalia – heels, dress and all. Every hotel in town books out months in advance, but there’s plenty of camping on-site.

Get Stoned.
Lismore is virtually around the corner from Byron Bay, and its great surfing beaches, café culture and whale watching make it a real hub for travelers. It’s also a short drive from Nimbin, which is Australia’s answer to Amsterdam. This little village is famous for its hippies, who came to the area in the 70s. Despite the fact that marijuana is illegal in NSW it’s everywhere in Nimbin – there’s even a museum devoted to it, and an annual marijuana “pride festival” held in May, called Mardi Grass (http://www.nimbinmardigrass.com/).

Get Naked.
If skinny dipping is your thing, head to Kings Beach, located halfway between Byron Bay and Lismore. It’s an absolute paradise - clear water, crashing waves, soft sand, set against a backdrop of lush tropical rainforest, where anything can, and often does, happen. Last time I went I saw a man sunbathing in nothing but a cock-ring. It’s a similar story in Sydney too with Obelisk, Lady Jane and Little Currawong beaches. Alexander Bay on the Sunshine Coast is another popular choice for gay boys. Don’t forget your sunscreen!

Get tipsy.
Australian wines are really making their mark internationally, and where they come from is just as impressive. The Hunter Valley is 2 hours north of Sydney, and Pokolbin is where you’ll find the upscale wineries and restaurants. Make sure you spend a night at Cedar Creek Cottages (http://www.cedarcreekcottages.com.au/). These log cabins are nestled amongst the vines and are so authentic, it feels like an episode of “Little House On The Prairie”. Keep an eye out for A Day On The Green (http://www.adayonthegreen.com.au/), which is an outdoor concert series that tours Australia’s vineyards annually. There’s nothing like sitting amongst grapevines under the stars, watching performances from the likes of B-52s, Whitney Houston or Shirley Bassey.

Get Lost.
For many, visiting Uluru (Ayers Rock) will be the defining moment of their trip. Tours start from Alice Springs, which feels like the end of the world. Visitors can watch the sun rise and set over the 348m high rock, and walk the almost 6 mile trek around it, but the indigenous people ask you not to climb it out of respect for their traditions.

Nearby is Kata Tjuta (The Olgas) which consists of 36 steep sided monoliths that, like Uluru, inspire lots of ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ at sunrise and sunset. There’s a hotel complex about 30 miles from Uluru, but many choose to sleep under the stars in a ‘swag’ – not as cosy, but infinitely more memorable.

Take a walk on the wild side.
Cairns is up towards the pointy end of Queensland, where there are only two seasons - the wet (November to April) and the dry (May to October). The animals are definitely in charge in this part of the world, so pay attention to the warning signs! There’s plenty of things to do – from going crocodile spotting in the mangroves, to visiting the world heritage listed Daintree Rainforest, or heading out to Green Island on the Great Barrier Reef to go diving, snorkeling or parasailing.

Spend a night at Skinny Dips (http://www.skinnydips.com.au/), a secluded, male only resort. They have a bar and restaurant on-site, and all rooms face onto the pool and spa. Think Melrose Place, with less clothing.

Visit Melbourne.
Every gay man should visit Melbourne – birthplace of the Minogues and Australia’s cultural capital. The city is split in half by the Yarra River – in the north you’ll find the manly men, the leather, the sex and the alternative crowd. The south side is home to more mainstream clubs, and a few drag bars too. The central business district is full of trendy bars and restaurants.

A stroll through the beachside suburb of St Kilda is a must, particularly on Sundays, where you’ll find markets on the esplanade. For lunch, pop in to Lentil As Anything (41 Blessington St, St Kilda), an amazing vegetarian restaurant, where you only pay what you think your meal is worth. For dessert, grab an ice cream at Trampoline Gelato (85 Acland St, St Kilda.)

As far as parties go, John and Trough Faggot Party are not to be missed for edgy, artsy types (http://www.troughfaggotparty.com/). If you’re looking for leather, head to the Laird Hotel, (149 Gipps Street, Abbotsford). Sircuit Bar (103 Smith St, Collingwood) is a one stop shop – a mix of bar, club, and backroom, with a great crowd, and a bucking bronco some nights too.

Saddle Up In Sydney.
As a gay destination, this is one city that has unfortunately lost its mojo. Don’t come expecting Sydney’s gay village to be intact - it’s now teeming with convenience stores, kebab shops, bargain bins and the occasional violent straight bar. However, there are still some diamonds in the rough: Nevermind (163 Oxford St, Darlinghurst) is jam-packed with the cool kids on Friday and Saturday nights; Stonewall Hotel is just next door, open every night, and is as camp as Christmas. There’s also the strip’s newest addition, Saddle Bar (Level 1, 85 Oxford St, Darlinghurst), which is worth visiting just to check out the clichéd ‘Australiana’ mural on the wall. It’s enough to make Rolf Harris cringe. For those who like things a little on the dirty side, Phoenix (34 Oxford St, Darlinghurst) on Saturday nights is a big favourite with the leather and fetish crowds. And if you’ve got any energy left, they host a wickedly trashy day club on Saturday and Sunday mornings.

What Sydney lacks in gay venues it makes up for with gay parties, which happen all over town, from the Sydney Opera House to bowling clubs in residential suburbs. Fag Tag is one of the most popular, taking over a different venue once a month, attracting the city’s most glamorous gays for cocktails and conversation (http://www.fagtag.com.au/).

On a sunny day, breakfast in Bondi Beach is a must. The views from Bondi Icebergs (1 Notts Ave, Bondi Beach) are so divine you’ll want to stay there all day. But then you’d miss out on the Bondi to Coogee coastal walk, which takes about 2 hours to complete, snaking its way along the water’s edge, taking you past secluded beaches, cafés and Waverley Cemetery, which looks like it’s about to slip off the cliff into the ocean. If you’re into scuba or snorkeling then stop off at Gordons Bay along the way.

At the end of the day, head down to the Sydney Opera House for sunset drinks at Opera Bar, where you can sit by the water and soak up the view - in your shorts and flip-flops if you want. These days, there’s a lot more going on beneath the sails than just opera - there’s theatre, comedy and plenty of contemporary music. Check out their Studio space – the shows are shorter, kookier, and often cheaper.

Show your pride!
Australia’s gay pride calendar kicks off with Melbourne’s Midsumma Festival (http://www.midsumma.org.au/) in January, Sydney’s Mardi Gras (http://www.mardigras.org.au/) in Feb/March, followed closely by Brisbane’s Big Gay Day (www.biggayday.com.au). Mardi Gras is by far the biggest, and the most famous of these, mainly due to its glory days in the 80s and 90s, when it was a creative, politically-driven force for change. These days, it’s a far more commercial affair and the party is often plagued by police and sniffer dogs, but it still manages to rope in the big names, like George Michael, Kelly Rowland and DJ David Guetta.

Yes, while many claim to be ‘versatile’, in Australia’s case it’s actually true. There really is something for everybody in this great southern land.

Published: GayTimes Magazine, May 2010.

Blurring the lines

2009-12-24T18:46:00.000-08:00

In light of the NRL group sex scandals and the more recent ‘dildo rape case’, we take a look at the issue of sexual consent. What is rape? Why are the lines not always clearly drawn? And who is muddying the waters?

Linda Naggs knows how to make an entrance – cracking her whip, smiling cheekily, all eyes in her direction. In September 2008 the 40 year old blonde stripper, who goes by the stage name of Tiffany, arrived at a buck’s party on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula ready to satisfy the crowd of 30 men, all keen to see a bit of skin. Less than a minute into her act the groom had vanished, and so the best man found himself in the hot seat, with Naggs slipping off his shirt, tugging down his trousers, pushing him on all fours. He was resisting, but the crowd loved it, and so did she. She pulled out a pink strap-on dildo and lubricant.

“Don’t you put that inside me!” he said, to which she replied, “Not a problem. Relax, it’s only fun, I won’t go there.” But she did go there, against a backdrop of his friends laughing, cheering and egging her on.

He ran off to the toilet and returned with a bloody piece of toilet paper as evidence that he’d been penetrated. “Look at this!” he yelled. She claimed it was “a joke”.

But it wasn’t so funny as the evidence unfolded in the Victorian County Court in July this year. According to testimonies there was an altercation, during which some of the guests intervened, pulling the pair off of each other. Naggs threatened to call her bikie mates to sort things out. Eventually she refunded his money and left. The matter was reported to the police the next day. Medical examiners found that the penetration had been sufficient for him to sustain an abrasion. Later he told the court that his manhood had been affected by the incident.

But was it rape, like the victim had claimed? After less than a day of deliberation the jury decided that no, it wasn’t. But why not? Because he’s a man and she’s a woman? Because he paid for her services? Because it was a sex toy? Because being half naked and on all fours meant that he was asking for it? All of these opinions about ‘blurred lines’ found their way into media discussions around the case, and even into the courtroom.

“There’s no blurred line there,” said Mary Heath, an Associate Professor, Flinders University’s Faculty of Law. “He said ‘don’t put that inside of me’, she said ‘I won’t’, meaning ‘I’ve heard you’. Don’t get me wrong, I think consent can be a very complex question. The only thing that makes this seem complicated is that people are thinking, ‘he was doing something transgressive, he had his pants down in the presence of a woman wearing a dildo – what did he think would happen?’ Well, he obviously wasn’t expecting that.”

According to Heath, who has 15 years experience teaching rape law, consent fundamentally boils down to free and voluntary agreement. “That’s not as straight forward as you might think: voluntary means that the person has the capacity to make a decision, freedom suggests that there can be some types of pressure that can be brought to bear.” Kinds of pressure can refer to threats or intimidation, substantial intoxication, fraud or deception, mistaken identity, having a limited cognitive capacity or being unlawfully detained.

After reading the media coverage of the trial, Heath believes that the best man was treated with suspicion, similar to the treatment a lot of women receive in rape cases.

“He had the additional difficulty of being a man saying ‘I was raped by a woman’. This is highly embarrassing to people at large. This case [was] treated like a joke, but it wouldn’t have been [were the gender roles reversed]. To me, the defence lawyer’s conduct as described in the media makes it sound like he did everything possible to encourage the jury to believe that the best man engaged in something akin to contributory negligence. In short, he asked for it.”

These are arguments thrown at women in rape cases all the time. Why was she drunk with that many men? Why did she go to the party? Why was she wearing that low cut dress? In much the same way, the defence lawyer argued that being half naked and on all fours was akin to “playing chicken with moving cars”. The media coverage delighted in the salacious details of the case – the “statuesque” pink dildo, that the show was called ‘anal’, that the best man hired the stripper.

“I am drawing a line in a particular place,” said Heath. “I’m saying, ‘I don’t care if the person was naked, I don’t care if they agreed to have sex with seven people before the eighth one wandered past,’ they still get to decide what they want to do next, with anyone. I think it’s where the law draws the line or at least where it should.”

According to Heath, beliefs about consent, which are based on myths and stereotypes, are being applied in Australian courts instead of the law. “I think all of the statistical evidence points to that, unfortunately.” Heath said that the 2008 dildo rape case is a perfect example of the chasm that exists between what society believes is rape and what is actually rape under the law. “The jury was led to believe that rape is only when somebody blameless is attacked by a total stranger by surprise, from behind a bush. What counts as a real rape in this society and statistically what’s actually a common rape are really different things.”

In light of incidents like the 2008 dildo rape case, and the NRL sex scandals which were given widespread media coverage earlier this year, it’s interesting to ponder how society views consent in transgressive circumstances, like group sex, or when gender roles are reversed. An area where similarly complex debates may arise is within bondage and fetish scenes, often known as BDSM, which can encompass a whole range of transgressive sexual practices from bruising, flogging and spanking through to surgery, rape, torture and abduction scenes. Last year Boy George was imprisoned for imprisoning an escort in his home unlawfully. And one of the most high profile cases involving BDSM sex took place in the UK in December 1990 when 16 gay men were given prison sentences of up to four and a half years or were fined for engaging in consensual S and M activity, because video footage of their activities had made its way into the hands of the police.

Patrick, 37, has been into bondage for almost ten years. He says that while the illusion of non-consent is at the heart of many submissive/dominant scenarios, that doesn’t mean they’re non-consensual. Usually one or more safe words are designated beforehand, which allow the participant to kill the situation instantly.

“There’s a master who owns his own playspace,” said Patrick. “People travel from all over the world and pay money to get abducted by him. They arrange to be in an area at a certain time, he grabs them, puts them in the boot of his car, blindfolds them, gags them, ties them up. Sometimes he takes them back to his dungeon and holds them captive for hours, sometimes days. I know one guy who did it – the master threw him in the boot of the car, ripped his clothes off and fisted him right then and there, while the car was parked on a street in Surry Hills. Then he dumped him in an alley.”

While safe words are one way of managing situations, according to Heath, the more complicated the scenario, the more likely it is that it will become non-consensual.

“Sometimes the chances of achieving an ethically and clearly negotiated sexual act are simpler than others. That doesn’t mean people always achieve it. When you look at the conversations had around group sex, particularly when you look at the NRL sex scandals, you can see that the wheels can come off, things can come unstuck. The more people are engaged in any form of negotiation the more of a chance there is that something unexpected or untoward goes down. I don’t think this is something that only happens in relation to sex.”

Heath points out that there are two elements at play when it comes to bondage and fetish scenes – not only is there the line between rape and consent, there’s also the line between sex and assault.

“When you’re talking about things that are not sex, things that can cause damage to your body, there are limits that the law establishes to what you can consent to.” Heath says that you can consent to anything that doesn’t do you actual bodily harm, things like caning and slapping. “However, there’s a line beyond that where you can’t consent.”

There are some fetish scenes that involve cutting the skin or deep bruising. Heath says these types of acts fall within a legal grey area. “It’s one thing what the law says, but … if everybody is really happy with what’s going on nobody goes to the police.” That being said, however, she says that people often consent to things without knowing how they’ll respond. “This happens all the time. It’s very difficult for us to forecast the future. An example could even be as banal as ‘if we have sex will that mean that you want to marry me? Will you want to move in? Will that ruin our friendship?’ People can’t predict those things, let alone what would happen if I decided that it would be interesting for someone to cut me open and spray vinegar into the wounds.” When it comes to committing these types of acts, one should consider not only if there is consent, but also if it’s assault, which renders any consent invalid.

Patrick said that he is aware of a number of occasions where the line between fantasy and reality has been crossed. “For example, the submissive says ‘don’t fuck me’ but the master fucks them anyway – stuff like that. They’ve ignored the person’s wishes and have taken advantage of the situation. It definitely happens, but people don’t report it. How do you go to the police and say ‘I asked someone to tie me up, beat me up, pierce me, put needles in me or cut me, but I didn’t want to be fucked, and they fucked me.’”

For support or further information on rape, please contact the Rape Crisis Centre in your state.

Published: SameSame.com.au, 24 December 2009.

Tori Amos: Sinful attraction tour, Australia, 2009

2009-11-26T19:02:00.000-08:00

Published: Same Same, 26 November, 2009.

Beige

2009-11-26T10:58:00.000-08:00

Can you believe it? An American pop star pashes another man and it's blurred and censored? Think back to when Madonna and Britney kissed - I can't tell you how many times I saw that plastered all over the media in the days and weeks that followed.

Conservative parents have been clutching their pearls, but Adam Lambert says that he's "a performer, not a babysitter" and that if parents were concerned about what their children saw on TV then they shouldn't have been watching at 11 o'clock at night. He said it all boils down to a double standard, and he's right.

"I think that if it had been a female pop performer doing the moves that were on the stage, I don't think there would be nearly as much of an outrage," Lambert said on Wednesday morning when he appeared on CBS's The Early Show. "Like I said, there were other performers doing risque things. I think it's because I'm a gay male, and people haven't seen that before."

True, people haven't seen that before. On TV we're often too busy renovating houses or planning weddings... but not our own of course.

Unfortunately for Adam, he's the perfect example of the conundrum that out, gay celebrities face . He's expected to "represent" us, and he'll never get it right, because there's no such thing. He'll either be too gay, or not gay enough. Some will call him too over the top, that he wears too much make up, that he took it too far. Some will say that they feel "mis-represented". Unfortunately mis-representation is part and parcel of being represented at all.

I, for one, think Adam should be congratulated. Many others who have gone before him have laughed all the way to the bank, and have made their deals with the devil of commerce.

Adam should be admired for being a true artist - someone who wants to shake things up, make change, interpret his music as he sees fit. He should be as outrageous and as flamboyant as he wants. Our world is so beige these days! I am tired of money always coming first. Does every bold action have to come with a risk assessment and a marketing strategy? We should all take a leaf out of Adam's book and lay a few things on the line occasionally. Let's bite the hand that feeds once in a while, let's stand our ground, let's give our opinion, even if others disagree. Let's re-think. As Socrates once said, "The unexamined life is not worth living."

Published: SameSame.com.au, 26 Nov 2009.

B52s: Enmore Theatre, 26 Nov 2009

2009-11-26T10:16:00.000-08:00

In today’s fickle pop world, few have weathered the storm quite like The B-52s. Their lifespan can be attributed to many things: their quirks and contradictions; their authenticity; the pure, seductive joy that lies within their music. Of course, once you see them live you realise they are so much bigger than the sum of their parts.

Named after their once towering hair-dos, The B-52s have had breakthrough hits in every decade since they began: Rock Lobster in the late 70s, Own Private Idaho and Love Shack in the 80s, Roam andGood Stuff in the 90s and in this century with their new albumFunplex. This puts them in a unique position – their music is a thread running right through generations.

Last night’s show at Sydney’s Enmore Theatre was glorious. They burst onto the stage with Pump, from the new album: Fred Schneider in striped jeans; Kate Pierson in flowing aqua; Cindy Wilson with kilos of platinum blonde hair, chunky white sunglasses and a black and red rubber dress; and guitarist Keith Strickland in basic black. Behind them strutted the coolest bass guitarist I’ve ever clapped eyes on, she looked truly smooth with her gold spandex mini skirt, chunky heels and afro.

The band kept the energy up as they moved through the set list –Mesopotamia, Ultraviolet and Own Private Idaho, which set the crowd on fire. All these years later and the band has managed to hang onto their unique sound, while still remaining firmly on the edge: Fred still has the right amount of unhinged craziness lurking beneath his semi-spoken-word stylings, Kate’s voice was in fine form and blended beautifully with Cindy’s.

At times The B-52s occupied a very other-worldly, futuristic, almost alien space, and there was something truly magical about that. With spiraling lights as a backdrop, I felt swept away on a UFO, transformed back in time to a world where things were simpler, and there was more hope for us mere mortals. I didn’t want to come home!

Love Shack was a showstopper. They stood united, belting out this universal anthem for freedom with boundless joy and not an ounce of apology. Funplex was another highlight, a love song of sorts, set in suburban shopping mall, examining the banality of commercialisation and consumption. During Love Shack a barefoot Cindy owned the stage with her famous “tin roof rusted” and in Funplex she ruled again, slipping in “I’m your daytime waitress, here’s your fucking 7Up.” Gold.

The B-52s had the audience captivated from start to finish, and they didn’t rely on lavish production values, or smoke and mirrors. The set up was strikingly simple – a few lights, the band, the costumes – leaving plenty of room for them to truly shine.

And shine they did! Rock Lobster was the finale and it brought the house down. They left the stage with smiles on their faces, and the audience screaming for more – just as it should be. It’s not hard to see why this band is still selling out shows thirty years after first taking to the stage.

Published: SameSame.com.au, 26 Nov 2009.

Soothing Spencer

2009-11-17T18:58:00.000-08:00

I’ve just finished my morning coffee here in Sydney but it’s still last night in New York, where I’m calling artist and photographer Spencer Tunick. I hear a few rings, then a clunk, followed by a tiny voice.

“I’m a little girl…”

“Hello?” I wonder if I have the wrong number.

“Do you want my daddy to talk to you? He likes black.” Given my complete inability to relate to children, I simply tell her ‘yes’. There’s some fumbling.

“Hey Christian, my daughter just told you that I like black,” laughs Spencer casually. He tells me that he wasn’t expecting my call for another hour. Perhaps daylight savings is to blame? “Oh look, she’s climbing like a monkey… Honey, can you please not do that? Daddy’s talking on the phone.”

More muffled noises come down the line – thumping, children playing noisily. Spencer tells them to stop doing this and stop doing that. He sounds patient, persuasive and composed. This is hardly surprising, given that he is famous not only for coercing thousands of people to shed their clothes in public, but also co-ordinating seas of naked people, sculpting them into a myriad of different shapes and patterns.

“Let me go somewhere private so you can have my undivided attention,” he says.

Spencer Tunick has been documenting the live nude in public since 1992, but it wasn’t until 1994 that he started working with large groups of people. Since then he’s created over 75 temporary site-specific installations around the world, his biggest being in Mexico City where he assembled 18,000 naked people. In March next year he’ll be one the headliners for the 2010 Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Festival, creating a series of installations called The Base.

“The name has two meanings. The second meaning is very literal and will be revealed closer to the date of the installation. The other meaning is a personal view that I believe that the future of any progressive small village, town or city is based on everyone having all full rights of free citizenship, to vote, to marry, to have insurance – all equal rights for gay, lesbian and transgender people. That kind of enlightened society may be 40 years from now, it may be 140 years from now.”

As for the location of the shoot, Tunick remains tight lipped, but says that much like the rest of his work, it will be an urban location.

“Well, in Sydney there’s not too much natural landscape left. Everything has a building jutting out of it, on the edge of it, next to it. There will be two different locations – one on the first day, a different one the next day. There will be one mass work, with a few different set ups, and then another installation the next day with maybe 100 or 200 people.” Spencer said that one location alone would not be dynamic enough to capture ‘his experience of Sydney’. “It’s all within the same eventual body of work that I’ll create… I want a second, a location that is more about celebration.”

Spencer is inviting both the gay and straight communities to come together and be part of the same work.

“I want someone who is straight to lie peacefully naked next to someone who is gay. I think the act, not only making the work, but the act itself is a calming of the senses.”

Many words spring to mind when one considers Spencer’s large-scale works – naked, chaos, urban, police – after all he’s been arrested five times in New York alone. ‘Calm’ isn’t one I had anticipated him using. ‘Soothing’ is another.

“I think it’s definitely a very soothing experience. Maybe not the thought of doing it, or even the aftermath, but the action of doing it is very calming. It’s a calm, organised, chaotic moment, if that’s possible. I think from country to country people participate for different reasons. In South America there might have been people objecting to overbearing government pressure or restrictions on freedom, that might be different for why people are posing in Belgium or Amsterdam. I certainly think that by getting the gay community to pose with the straight community, that idea of being naked together is quite sublime. To make an esoteric work at that moment is what I am hoping will transcend people’s pre-conceptions about equality and will create this wonderful harmonious moment.”

Spencer has been creating these installations for fifteen years, and says that over the years he’s learned to take the urgency out of his work and calm down a bit himself.

“From 1994 to 2001 it was mostly a splattering of bodies, sort of crumpled paper thrown into a big room, or sort of like moss on rocks of a misty beach. Basically there was a very urgent need to get the work done quickly, like Jackson Pollock throwing paint. I was so used to being threatened by arrest from the New York Police that I took that urgency to other countries. You can see that in the work and I think in 2002 I took a little departure from that by having the bodies standing and less lying down. I started to spend a bit more time on the installations, making them two day installations, creating a body of work as opposed to just a one day work. Where I would only have once had three final pieces, now I have six or seven.”

Spencer says that despite what many may expect, most people who pose for him are not exhibitionists. “I like to make people feel as comfortable as possible… often this is the first time people are getting naked in public, these people are not exhibitionists… then again, I don’t know about the people who have been in Mardi Gras though!” he laughs. “Certainly for 99% of the people it is a unique experience.”

This will be Spencer’s second installation in Australia – his first was in Melbourne in 2001. “I made some wonderful friends in Australia. When I was there I traveled in a car from Melbourne all the way up north, thousands and thousands of miles, and ended up flying out of Cairns. I literally looked at a map, and I didn’t realise how far it was! I didn’t compare the map to the California coast or anything, or the east coast of New York, I just looked at it and thought, that’s four inches tall, we can do that! I saw a lot of road kill and a lot of fires.”

His Melbourne installation saw 4,500 people assemble in Alexandra Gardens. Spencer is reluctant to say how many he is hoping for in Sydney.

“I would like more than a thousand, but I’m not a big quoter of large numbers because I know how difficult it is to get people to actually take that leap of faith,” he says. “I’m really hoping that people consider it seriously, because I really need people. And I think it’s a great experience.”

Spencer Tunick – The Base will take place at a secret location in Sydney, March 1, 2010 as part of the Mardi Gras Festival.

Published: SameSame.com.au, 17 Nov 2009.

Sniffer dogs: Getting nosey

2009-11-10T18:46:00.000-08:00

For Australian party and festival goers, police, drug dogs and strip searches have become commonplace. It seems the days of letting off steam far from the watchful eye of Big Brother are long gone. But how much do they cost? And are the dogs actually working?

It’s a cold, wet night in Sydney, and some 5,000 partygoers are making their way to Sleaze Ball, the annual fundraiser for the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade. Beyond the sheets of rain, bright lights and the distant thump of dance music beckon. For 27 years this has been the second biggest date on Sydney’s gay calendar, a night of fantasy and escapism. For some, an evening of self-discovery and celebration awaits; for others, it will be a night they’d rather forget, with NSW Police searching 33 people and charging 17 with drug possession.

One such person is 47 year old David. He was searched after a sniffer dog gave him a positive indication. Officers found one ecstasy pill. “I was fingerprinted, identified, charged,” says David. “While I was waiting I saw the police bring one young guy into the search area. He’d been positively indicated by the sniffer dog, but no drugs had been found. The cop was asking him ‘Are the drugs up your bum?’ The young man’s face fell, as did mine – the implied threat in the air was that he was about to be anally searched. They took him into another area, and when I saw him about five minutes later he seemed okay, but he had been put through the wringer.”

David said that after he and his friend were processed, his friend asked Police if he could stay and comfort a very distressed young man who was also being charged. “The answer was ‘no’. That poor young man – we still feel bad about him but there was nothing we could do, they would not let my friend stay. They were just plain mean to us from this stand point, and no observer from New Mardi Gras was there at any time.” There was also nobody around when Police confiscated people’s party tickets once they were charged.

These days if you’re on public transport, at a sporting or entertainment event, or on licensed premises, all police need is a positive sniff from a drug detection dog to search you. That can include asking you to remove any or all of your clothing, sometimes in full public view. It can mean being frisked and grilled by numerous officers at a time. And it’s not just people carrying drugs on them that are being searched.

A spokesperson from the NSW Police Dog Unit told Same Same that they currently have 16 dogs in NSW and that they “are among the most efficient and best trained in the world.” However, according to research conducted by the NSW Ombudsman which was published in 2006, the dogs are a failure when it comes to dealing with the purpose they were originally intended for – catching dealers. The report also found that almost three-quarters of searches resulted in no drugs being found. While Police claim the dogs have a 70% accuracy rate, the report believes it’s more likely to be 25-30%, and that some individual dogs rate as low as 7%. This is pretty concerning when you consider how invasive police searches can be.

According to Stephen Blanks, Secretary for NSW Council of Civil Liberties, complaints about police dogs are increasing.

“When legislation was introduced so that police had the power to use sniffer dogs, the stated purpose was to catch drug suppliers, but dogs are completely ineffective for attacking the supply chain. Using dogs at events like Sleaze Ball is inappropriate – it’s inherently designed to catch recreational, personal users not suppliers.”

Blanks says that he believes there is a general public concern that this NSW government “seems to be in the pockets of the Police and every time they say they want new powers and weapons they bend over backwards to give it to them, without thinking about whether these powers will be abused. Whether sniffer dogs are a significant source of discontent, I don’t know. They probably should be, because of their ineffectiveness and their intrusiveness.”

Joel, 23, was also searched by the Police at Sleaze, and no drugs were found. Instead of walking into a party with friends, an event he’d paid almost $150 to attend, he was pulled aside by officers, and led away to a van nearby to be searched.

“I was asked if I’d been around anyone who had had drugs that night and I said no. But how would you even know? I may have been. Who can say?” says Joel. “I was put up against a wall and frisked. He felt inside my pants, hands went inside my underwear a bit, but not too far down, he felt up in my crotch. They made me take off my shoes, and it was pouring with rain. I was separated from my friends, the whole thing lasted about 20 minutes and I was treated with the presumption of guilt throughout, definitely. Even though I didn’t have anything on me, it left me feeling rattled for the rest of the night.”

For Australian festival goers, drug dogs at the front gates and sometimes even on the dance floor have become commonplace. Even if you’ve been around someone else smoking cannabis you could find yourself whisked away to a police van to be searched.

Despite their unpopularity, Superintendent Donna Adney from Surry Hills Local Area Command defends their drug dog operations. “As Commander I encourage people not to attend events in Surry Hills with drugs on them, that way they won’t need to worry about being detected,” she says.

“In total at the Sleaze Ball, there were 33 searches, resulting in 17 detections – a detection rate of over 50%. In addition, of the remaining 16 searches conducted, 11 of those persons freely admitted that they had smoked cannabis prior to their search, or had been around people who had been smoking cannabis immediately prior to attending the party. This honesty is great.”

Adney told Same Same that strip searches were conducted at Sleaze Ball and that under law police do have the power to ask those indicated to remove all of their clothes. “In our experience at Surry Hills people secret prohibited drugs, and in some cases weapons, inside their inner clothing and more commonly inside their underwear. A ‘strip search’ may include removing clothing but more commonly a strip search by police involves an officer looking inside the undergarments where drugs are commonly secreted. Some persons at Sleaze Ball were strip searched and those searches occurred in specifically designated areas.”

Legislation defines a strip search as: a search of a person or of articles in the possession of a person that may include: (a) requiring the person to remove all of his or her clothes, and (b) an examination of the person’s body – but not of the person’s body cavities – and of those clothes. “Police conduct a variety of searches dependent on the situation,” says Adney. “As far as is reasonably practicable, when conducting a strip search police are mindful to conduct it in a private area, by an officer of the same sex as the person being searched.” Police should not ask someone to remove more items of clothing than the officer believes reasonably necessary for the purposes of the search, nor should they visibly inspect someone’s body more than they believe is necessary.

Adney maintains that there were no cavity searches conducted and that Police do not have the power to do so. “I encourage any person who was subjected to a cavity search by a Police Officer to contact my Professional Standards Officer, Inspector Andrew Koutsoufis personally on 92654144 so that the matter can be followed up.”

Tim Duggan is a Sydney event promoter and one of the organisers of Summer Gay Day, an outdoor festival held in Moore Park. The annual event has been on twice and both times it’s been targeted by the Police.

“The second year was just ridiculous. There were at least twenty officers, about six patrol cars which they parked right out the front, as well a number of dogs. The party started at 2pm but the Police got there at midday, just standing around for two hours doing nothing. The sheer waste of resources was unbelievable.”

Tim says that because of bad weather partygoers arrived late, so for the first few hours there were literally more police than patrons. “They sniffed almost everyone that came into the party – DJs and performers were searched in full view… it’s not a good look. All of the DJs complained to me and to the other organisers and said it was just ridiculous. From what I know the majority of people who were searched didn’t have anything on them,” says Tim.

“They stayed for hours and were essentially doing strip searches around the lake in full view, getting people to take their socks off, their shirts, their pants… They continued until the early evening, walking around inside the venue, sniffing people on the dancefloor. It was the biggest mood killer for an event that I have ever seen, and I think that’s what they were aiming for. As a promoter, it felt that they were targeting the enjoyment of the people who were there. We’d spent a year planning layout, music, production, everything – and they just came on the day and ruined the vibe.”

Tim said that numerous meetings with the police throughout the planning process didn’t seem to help either. “For us, it seemed that the better our relationship was with the police, the more we were just flagging it for them.”

The NSW Ombudsman’s report also found that during their two year review period only 141 searches, that’s 1.38% of all indications, actually yielded quantities of drugs that were deemed supply, but only 19 of those people were successfully prosecuted. These were mostly young, male, first-time offenders who were supplying to people they knew. More than 99% of persons indicated by dogs either had no drugs, or did not possess enough to be deemed suppliers. The report was not able to find any evidence that dogs acted as a deterrent for drug users, nor did they disrupt low-level street dealing, increase feelings of public safety or reduce drug related crime. Nor was there any evidence that police obtained intelligence information during these operations that led to further investigation of drug supply.

Cost effectiveness is another factor. While NSW Police are unable to reveal an ultimate price tag for the dogs, the dog unit does receive an allocation under the drug budget, as well as $115,000 from NSW Health. The dogs themselves are teamed with a Police Officer who is an accredited handler and whose responsibility it is to care for the Detection Dog, for which they are paid an additional hour each day to do in their own time. One legal expert in Sydney has speculated that taxpayers may be paying up to $90,000 for each dog.

As for the operations themselves, the Ombudsman’s report looked at a 2004 drug dog operation at the Big Day Out in Sydney that NSW Police said had yielded “excellent results”. They found a total of 323 police officers were deployed at a cost of $41,000. 414 people were indicated and searched, of these, 86 were charged with drug-related offences, including 18 for supply. In total, 5 were successfully prosecuted for supply – none of them had any prior criminal convictions. 3 out of the 5 had no conviction recorded and were subject to a good behaviour bond, 1 received a bond and a conviction, and 1 received a 16-month suspended sentence. All of the successful supply prosecutions involved supply of drugs to friends and partners.

Similarly with the recent Sleaze Ball operation, the 17 individuals who faced court in late October were not penalised, nor did they have a conviction recorded. NSW Police say that they are unable to comment on how they feel about this result.

“There were seventeen people arrested for drug possession as a result of the Drug Dog Operation held at Sleaze Ball 2009,” says Adney. “Most of those were issued Field Court Attendance Notices at the time. We also conducted operations at Parklife and God’sKitchen that weekend. All officers who worked Sleaze Ball were wearing yellow rain gear, due to the weather, which results in them being highly visible and may have lead party goers to think there were more Police than are normally at such events.”

“For me, I wonder why so much resourcing went into the Sleaze operation, where 33 people were searched out of 5,000, nobody ended up with any fines, bonds or convictions, and none of the police operations were about patron safety,” says David. “It is smoke and mirrors, capturing minor users like me. It’s a PR stunt, regardless of the efficacy, all for a single pill, not for drug driving, but for a little drug dancing.”

Blanks says that while the Federal Government is currently looking at a Bill of Rights, NSW currently has no proper human rights protection. “Sniffer dogs infringe the right to privacy, the right to be free of arbitrary and intrusive searches by the state. There is no forum, no court that people can really go to at the moment to complain about this right being infringed.”

At the moment NSW Police collect personal details of all people who are searched, whether they have drugs on them or not. “That’s a typical complaint that we get from people. What is this information used for?” says Blanks. “It’s one thing doing the search, but going the next step and getting identity details from people is another.” A Police spokesperson however claims that there is no obligation for individuals to supply their personal details, “unless they are taken into custody whilst suspected of committing other offences”.

“We didn’t end up complaining in the end. What’s the point?” says Duggan. “If the Police won’t listen to the Ombudsman, what difference would we make? I think we’ve gone too far down the path with sniffer dogs, and I don’t see it ever changing, simply because the Police need to be seen to be doing something, and they’re doing it for Joe Public who loves reading the Daily Telegraph after Big Day Out and hearing that 60 people were caught with small amounts of drugs. I think the Police spend more time press releasing the results from their sniffer dog operations than actually conducting them. I wonder if they’d be proud enough to tell everyone how much the operations cost, and how little they yield in terms of actual convictions.”

Superintendent Adney says that the sniffer dogs are here to stay. Regardless of where you stand on the issue of drugs, the days of partying without big brother watching seem like a distant memory.

“Surry Hills Police will continue to conduct a variety of policing strategies to target criminal offences across our command in an effort to drive down all crime including drug and related crimes. People who come to these events who are not in the possession of prohibited drugs have nothing to fear.”

Published: SameSame.com.au, 10th November, 2009.

Lives hang in the balance

2009-10-30T11:08:00.000-07:00

The east African country is still debating its recently tabled Anti-Homosexuality Bill which, if adopted, would mean a whole raft of increased penalties, like life imprisonment for those who engage in homosexuality, or the death penalty for those found guilty of having gay sex with disabled people, people under the age of 18 or if the accused is HIV positive.

The whole concept, in this day and age, is terrifying. Imagine living under such a regime, where even those who are sympathetic to the cause could find themselves punished.

Needless to say human rights advocates from around the world are up in arms over the proposed changes, but this week Uganda's "Ethics Minister" James Nsaba Buturo dismissed their concerns.

"We are really getting tired of this phrase 'human rights'," he told journalists on Thursday. "It is being abused. Anything goes, and if you are challenged? 'Oh, it's my right'. Anal sex? Human rights. Robbery? Human rights. All sort of nonsense? Human rights."

Of course, if anything is being abused it's this notion of "god given rights" and the sense of entitlement that seems to come along with that.

He says that other countries should mind their own business, that Uganda will not compromise its integrity on the issue. "They cannot believe that Uganda says, on certain issues we are not going to sell our soul," he said.

As western democracies move towards the pointy end of gay rights, dotting the Is and crossing the Ts, spare a thought for these parts of the world. How many years will it take for them to be free?

Published: SameSame.com.au, 30 Oct 2009.

Lisa Williams sees dead people

2009-09-22T19:02:00.000-07:00

It’s a balmy September night in Brisbane and medium and clairvoyant Lisa Williams peers out into an audience of 1500 at City Hall. “I have a young female spirit with me who hung herself,” says Lisa, rubbing her throat, as if it’s sore. “She wants to get a message to her mum. Can anybody relate to this?” Some hands go up, and one by one Lisa dismisses them. Finally, up the back of the auditorium, a woman stands, trembling. Before uttering a word Lisa tells her, “Yes, it’s you – she’s telling me ‘that’s her, that’s my Mum!’”

And so the story unfolds, with Lisa talking of how the young woman committed suicide after breaking up with her boyfriend. “She’s saying she’s sorry, that there’s nothing you could have done, that you have to stop feeling guilty.” Lisa then announces the arrival of a second spirit. “He says he’s your brother.”

The woman nods. “He hung himself too.”

“And Mum’s here as well!” It’s then that the woman breaks down sobbing. “Wait, I’m coming down there,” says Lisa, walking from the stage. “Someone help get her out to the aisle.” The woman collapses into Lisa’s arms and for a moment they hug. Lisa assures the woman that her deceased relatives aren’t in hell for committing suicide, that the three of them are all looking after each other, and that they’ll be waiting for her when it’s her turn. “Also, have you had your hair done recently? Because they keep on commenting on it,” says Lisa.

The woman turns bright red and laughs, “I’m actually wearing one of Mum’s old wigs!” The crowd roars with laughter, and the woman returns to her seat beaming, telling Lisa, “you don’t know what this means to me.”

Lisa is a medium and clairvoyant, which means that she can see into the past and the future, and can communicate with people who have died. You can either believe that, or not, she isn’t fazed. The success of Lisa’s TV series ‘Life Among The Dead’ and ‘Voices From The Other Side’ have seen her thrust onto the world stage, and she can barely keep up with the demand. She says that international exposure wasn’t something she set out to achieve – it found her when she did a reading for someone who worked in TV.

“I do still give private readings, but these days I have a waiting list that’s miles long. If I am at a meet and greet and I have a message for someone there I’ll give it to them. And I do have an online group of members and I will give away one reading a month… But fundamentally this is why I now do my live shows, because that’s the best way that I can reach a large number of people at a time.”

Lisa says she can remember seeing dead people as early as three years old. At first she thought it was something everyone could do, and it took her years to come to grips with it. “My grandmother was the same, she had this gift as well. I remember before she passed she told me ‘one day you are going to carry on my work and you’re going to be famous around the world for doing it’. At the time I thought ‘what a load of rubbish’.”

For years Lisa tried her best to ignore the spirits who were constantly vying for her attention, however these days she’s known for stopping strangers in the street and delivering messages from deceased loved ones, everyone from young children, to old school buddies and parents.

Lisa has already toured Australia once this year, and describes the experience as ‘phenomenal’.

“I did two shows in Sydney, two in Melbourne and they all sold out in a few days. I donated all the proceeds to the bushfires appeal, something like $65,000 – and that was amazing. The number of people in Australia who embrace the spiritual lifestyle was absolutely incredible. I do remember one particular reading, I think it was in Melbourne. It was the last reading of the night where I said ‘we have a skeptic over in this area of the audience and I need to speak to you sir’ and this guy looked up at me and said, ‘Who me? How do you know I’m a skeptic?’ and I said ‘well your father’s telling me this’. Well you could have knocked him over with a feather. The whole family stood up, there were tears, laughter – it was funny – really, really lovely. That reading turned a lot of skeptics into believers.”

Over the years Lisa has been challenged by many skeptics, including her own father. “He’s one of the biggest skeptics around!” she laughs. “But Dad has also seen first hand what I can do, and he’s seen how I give people a feeling of closure, and he says ‘you know what Lisa, I can’t take that away from you’.”

One of the most public challenges Lisa has faced was with a skeptic named Laura on an episode of ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show’. Lisa said that during the reading she kept offering Laura details that should have resonated – like her father’s name, or that he was a ballroom dancer – but Laura remained unconvinced, and was intent on getting cold, hard facts.

“I gave her the name John, but she wanted his full name, that kind of thing. I told her ‘I am only telling you what he is giving me, I can’t make it change’. I almost got up and walked away. I said, ‘if you’re not open to this then there’s no point in me being here’.”

Lisa says that she often reads comments about her in online forums, where people dispute her authenticity. “People say ‘oh Lisa Williams gets all the ticket data and uses that to do background checks on people who come to her show’. Well hello, it’s just me. I don’t have a team of researchers. I certainly don’t put microphones in the bathrooms or under the seats. I laugh at it. Of course, when it comes to TV, the producers get given a certain story. The talent tells them ‘I want to communicate with my mum because of…’ but often there’s another story that comes out or that I bring out.

“And also, people don’t realise just what goes on behind the scenes. The TV producers keep me right away from the talent, they take measures to make sure that I don’t see any of the call sheets or any of the information. There’s a make up artist who goes to check that my client is camera ready and who comes to tell me, but there’s a person who stands outside my dressing room the entire time listening to every little piece of conversation. If anything was slipped then that make up artist would be fired. It’s actually happened before where a make up artist slipped me a piece of information unwittingly – they said ‘oh you’re gonna love this woman, she’s so lovely, it’s so sad about her dad’. That person was taken off the show just for saying that piece of information. I think people need to realise that it is really very genuine and what you see is what you get.”

So, what insight does she have into the big questions like, ‘what’s the meaning of life?’ or ‘what happens when we die?’

“You know what? I don’t think any human being could know what the meaning of life is. It’s such a complicated question. As for the afterlife, well, I only know what the spirits tell me. They tell me that their loved ones were waiting for them when they died, that they go towards the light, that they listen when loved ones talk to them, that in the afterlife their pain is gone. Spirits basically fall into two categories – there are those that get stuck here, which often happens with suicides, and those that move over and come back occasionally to communicate with us. I’ve had a near death experience and so I can assure you, where we go afterwards is a very phenomenal place.”

Published: SameSame.com.au, 22 Sep 2009.

And on the seventh day...

2009-09-11T11:24:00.000-07:00

And on the seventh day, he rested. And perhaps he even enjoyed a refreshing glass of Cola. But which one? Well, certainly not Pepsi, according to an American "megachurch" - they've deemed the beverage as too gay-friendly and have officially switched to Coke as their cola of choice.

The man behind it is Terry Kemple, who has persuaded the Bell Shoals Baptist Church in Brandon, Florida, to boycott Pepsi, because they "advocate the acceptance of the homosexual lifestyle."

His reasons? Well, he says that Pepsi has spent more than US$1 million in support of marriage equality and Pride events. Pepsi also provides diversity training for its staff, which Kemple says "forces" them to accept homosexuality. Kemple says that Pepsi has "begun to utilise the money we've helped them build up to trample on what we consider family values."

However, the executive director of Equality Florida, Nadine Smith, told The Sun Sentinel newspaper, "The irony is that - in moving from Pepsi products to Coke products - they actually switched from one company that supports full equality to another company that supports full equality."

Yes, since 2002 The Coca-Cola Company has been funding an on the ground HIV prevention and treatment program in Africa. They've also been on the Human Rights Campaign's 100% Pro-Homosexual Corporations list for two years, which means that when it comes to workplace diversity they tick every single box.

So, as far as I can tell, the Church better stick to drinking water. And they probably should avoid other companies like Apple, Abercrombie and Fitch, American Express, Google, Mastercard, Microsoft, Nike, Starbucks, Visa, Disney and Yahoo, who are all big supporters of the global GLBT community.

Published: SameSame.com.au, 11 Sep 2009.

How very dare you

2009-09-03T11:28:00.000-07:00

Recently two guys named Robert and Dan appeared as contestants on Channel Nine's prime-time reality show 'Australia's Perfect Couple'. Robert said that they wanted to promote gay marriage and foster care, as they are "proud foster parents".

At first I baulked at the whole concept of the show. What on earth does 'Australia's Perfect Couple' look like? Do I even want to know? Quite frankly, I felt nauseous at the thought.

As it turned out, Australia's Perfect Couple almost turned out to be Robert and Dan! After performing well in all the challenges throughout the series, they got right down to the wire. They didn't win in the end, but they came mighty close. And what would the Australian public have thought of that? As one newspaper columnist wrote recently, "Australia came 'this close' to celebrating man-love."

Unfortunately this display of gay domestic bliss sank like a stone ratings wise. It gave Channel Nine one of the lowest 8pm commercial TV audiences of the year, according to Australian media site mUmbrella. Still, you gotta hand it to them for trying.

Reading through the readers' comments on the Channel Nine website is pretty terrifying. It's like when we produce the Same Same 25, our annual list of influential gay and lesbian Australians - it always brings the homophobes out of the woodwork and some people really do say the most hideous things. It reminds you of why so many of us still flock to our urban bubbles and why gay youth suicide is so high.

Allow me to share a few gems with you.

"Disgusting! Disgusting! Disgusting. Really Channel Nine has stooped too low this time to put on a show as this, proudly exposing to viewers (especially minors) that homosexuality is fine and normal. How pathetic!"

"What's wrong with Channel Nine these days. Every program has to have a homosexual person or couple on it... Are we suppose to think it's great that those two people have a foster child? All this at 7.30 at night. Is everyone in the media trying to convince this generation that this is normal? It makes me sick."

And most of this pearler was written in caps, but I have edited it for the sake of your eyes:

"Nine has now hit rock bottom... Homosexuals should be hidden and not celebrated. You even show the fags kissing! How dare you! Disgusting. What on earth is the programmer thinking of? This is prime time and children watch TV too. A show full of half wits is one thing, but homosexuals is another. These people are vile and should not be put on TV as if they are normal because they are not. How dare you subject the viewer to this sewerage."

Congratulations Robert and Dan for, if nothing else, stirring up the homophobes.

Published: SameSame.com.au, 3 Sep 2009.

What's your poison?

2009-08-28T17:41:00.000-07:00

The results are in from the Gay Census. So far we’ve looked at gay marriage and sex. This week we’re putting drugs, cigarettes and alcohol under the microscope. What are we taking and why? And how do we compare to the general population?

So how many of us have tried drugs? The results look pretty similar for gay men and lesbians, with 67% of gay men and 64% of lesbians having tried drugs more than once, 10% of men and 13% of women trying them just the once, and around a quarter of all respondents have never touched them at all.

So why do we take them? 40% of men and 24% of women said it enhances their clubbing experience, 36% of men and 28% of lesbians simply enjoy it and 28-29% of all respondents put it down to experimentation. Gay men are much more likely to take drugs to enhance sex or because it is a group norm amongst their friends. When it comes to taking drugs out of boredom, habit or “because I don’t have fun without them” the numbers were low; around the 3–6% mark for both men and women.

Paul Dillon from Drug And Alcohol Research and Training Australia has over 25 years experience in drug and alcohol education. He says right upfront that these findings need to be put into context.

“What you have to remember about many of these sorts of surveys and people who would access an organisation like Same Same is that they are ‘community attached’ people. That means they go to bars, they go to nightclubs, because that’s how the gay community socialises,” says Dillon. “So you end up with quite a skewed sample. Is this just your average gay person? Does this take into account the gays and lesbians who live in the suburbs, who have white picket fence and two dogs and who have no attachment in the nightclub scene? I would say it doesn’t at all, and most research doesn’t, because they don’t take part in it, they don’t attach themselves to the community in that way.”

Dillon says that what the findings do confirm is that ‘community attached’ gay men and lesbians who tend to frequent pubs and clubs do have quite significant amounts of alcohol and drug use. “But, that being said, if you look at straight people who live in the inner city, who go to nightclubs and dance parties, it’s exactly the same. The gay community is very attached to that scene for a number of different reasons.” When you compare the findings to the lifestyle survey conducted by dance music website InTheMix.com.au some three years ago, the results were remarkably similar, the main difference being that drug use in the straight party scene appears to start much younger.

As for the substances taken, the most common is marijuana – 93% of men and 97% of women. Followed by the typical ‘clubber’ drugs: ecstasy (80% of men, 61% of women), amphetamines (68% of men, 60% of women), cocaine (58% of men, 43% of women) and katamine (45% of men 20% of women).

Drugs like meth, GHB and heroin have lower trial and lower ongoing usage – 40% of gay men and 23% of women have tried meth, 35% of men and 15% of women have tried GHB and heroin sits at 7-8%.

“That is exactly what you would see in the general community in the household survey, except for four,” says Dillon. “Cocaine use would be significantly lower in the general community, K would be much, much lower and so would GHB. Heroin use is much higher in the general community than it is for the gay scene. Not to say heroin use isn’t there, because it definitely is – it always has been, but it’s very hidden and it’s one of those drugs that’s not talked about.”

When asked what kind of effect drugs have had on people’s lives, 40% of men and 34% of women have cited both a positive and negative effect on their lives, while 39% of men and 43% of women say that there’s been no noticeable effect at all. Only 10% of men and 6% of women said that drugs had been a positive influence on their lives.

“I’m surprised at how low that figure is,” says Dillon. “I think people are trying to temper their answer, by saying that it’s had both a positive and negative effect on their life – they’re probably thinking ‘gee I had some great times, but the reason why I’ve stopped is because there’s a real negative there as well’.”

When it comes to the downside of drug taking 30% of men and 24% of women had taken a sick day after taking drugs, 10-11% had lost a friendship or a relationship, 7% of men and 10% of women had taken a friend to hospital, 8% of men and 5% of women had been kicked out of a venue and 3-4% had been taken to hospital themselves. 2% of men and 3% of women had been charged or warned by police.

Dillon describes the large number of respondents who said that drugs have had no noticeable effect on their lives as ‘interesting’. “That’s a strange response. What we have to remember about the gay community is that use tends to start later in life, we’ve got quite a bit of research that suggests that more thought goes into it beforehand, they do a little bit more research, ask more questions. There’s more consultation with older peers, a bit more top down education. That was very much a feature of the first ecstasy wave in the gay community in the late 80s and early 90s. And because we look around and we do our research we have more of an idea that things can go wrong. If you talk to people who have used illicit substances they’ll say that they cut back because the good didn’t outweigh the bad anymore – they were having bad comedowns, they weren’t functioning at work, they were getting older so they just dropped it. Perhaps people are just remembering the negative?”

When it comes to drug dependency in the gay community, 65% of men and 49% of women believe that they could walk away from drugs without any outside help. 4 – 5% of respondents believe that they’d need some assistance getting off them and 3% said that they don’t think they need to.

“That figure has changed so much within the gay community in the last ten years with the introduction of ice,” says Dillon. “It really changed many people’s perceptions of illicit substances as well, for the first time they saw their friends’ lives being really negatively affected. Beforehand when GHB overdoses were occurring people would try to excuse that by saying ‘well that’s just stupidity’ but with ice it was ‘this is a bad drug’.” Dillon says that every time a new drug is introduced into the community it creates new problems and new issues, not only for the people but the community itself. “Ketamine completely changed the ecstasy culture, then GHB came along which brought the police presence in and it changed the way everyone functioned. Then ice came in… So we’ve had this real sort of destruction of the party culture.”

So when it comes to how the Australian authorities deal with drugs, does Dillon think we should be doing things differently?

“No I don’t really. There are lots of issues around law enforcement that I personally don’t agree with, like sniffer dogs for example. I think they are a very bad policing strategy for a number of different reasons. There are much better ways that we could use resources. However what we have done, and done quite well in Australia, is acknowledge that young people make mistakes and sometimes don’t think about the consequences. The laws have changed – it was done quietly and nobody really talks about it. These days in some cases you can receive a caution and that will not actually affect the rest of your life.”

So how does the gay community compare when it comes to legal drugs, like cigarettes and alcohol?

Unsurprisingly, around 99% of us have tried alcohol, while 79% of men and 84% of women have tried cigarettes. “That’s much higher than that general household survey, 90% of the general population have tried alcohol and 45% have tried cigarettes. Of course, you have to remember that the household survey starts from 14 years of age, so that could account for some of the difference. Again, you can’t compare these statistics perfectly with the general population, but what you can say is that if you looked at young inner city people who go to nightclubs, the differences may not be so great.”

Gay men are bigger fans of wine and regular weekly drinking, while lesbians are noticeably more likely to be smokers. Per month, 37% of gay men spend over $100 on alcohol as do 30% of lesbians, which could mean high consumption, or premium tastes. As for regular monthly spending on drugs, an overwhelming majority, between 64 – 78%, of respondents don’t spend a cent. That being said, 20% of gay men are spending more than $50 per month on drugs, compared to 12% lesbians.

“One drug that never gets a mention that really should get much more of a mention is alcohol. It has always been an issue.”

Published: SameSame.com.au, 28 Aug 2009.

Sydney: Is the party over?

2009-08-20T17:46:00.000-07:00

This week an article in the Daily Telegraph proclaimed that ‘Oxford Street is straight’, that ‘straight’ venues now outnumber the gay ones, and that The Gaff is hosting the ‘straightest’ ritual of them all – a wet t-shirt competition. Few would dispute that the strip, and gay Sydney for that matter, has changed radically in recent years. So as a scene and a community, where are we at? Is the party almost over?

It’s the morning after Sydney Leather Pride’s annual fundraiser Inquisition and many have continued on to the official after party at Phoenix Rising. It was the first year that Inquisition had ventured away from the glamorous, gentrified Entertainment Quarter – a brave move in a new direction that many supported. But while the party tickets sold out, the comments floating around the dancefloor tell a different story.

“The cops came with dogs and stayed for hours, people were getting arrested.” “The venue refused to turn the lights down.” “For a leather party it was sexless.” “I didn’t like the music.” “There were too many straight people.”

A leather clad woman furiously sips on her drink.

“I am tired of going out and having men put their hands up my skirt,” she tells me, introducing herself as Jen. “I know I have long hair, but hello – I’m a lesbian! I’m not interested! I’m tired of putting up with this every time I go out. Is this just a place for the straights to come and experiment? This used to be ours!”

True, it used to be. But so much has changed in such a short amount of time. The internet came and took a chunk of the scene away, and through their sponsorship of Mardi Gras online sex sites like Gaydar were handed to gay Sydney on a silver platter. The scene, particularly Mardi Gras, became increasingly commercial, which meant money came first and politics second. The scene, awash with straight girls, in turn attracted all the straight boys, and as homophobic violence and aggression on Oxford Street rose, along with police numbers, the strip became an increasingly unpleasant place to be.

“I don’t think Oxford Street caters well to anyone,” says Damien Eames, head of Marketing at New Mardi Gras. “I rarely go there anymore… Sydney’s mix of planning controls and liquor licensing restrictions means there are very few high intensity night life districts. There are only so many venues that can be crammed into Kings Cross, Oxford Street and George Street. The market isn’t really that competitive and as a result venues can treat their customers as cattle.”

Eames grew up in Belfast and says that when he went back home last Christmas, he couldn’t believe how many cute little gay venues had popped up there. “This conservative provincial city of 300,000 compares favourably with Sydney, but there’s no comparison when you look at London, Paris, Berlin or Madrid. I don’t think my friends in London are quite so addicted to Gaydar and Manhunt as people are here. It’s not a great city for meeting new people.”

“It feels gay people are outnumbered on the strip,” says promoter and DJ Dan Murphy. “Often the bulk of the people who aren’t there to go gay clubbing are rough and intimidating. They definitely have an overwhelming presence on Oxford St.”

“I have travelled extensively and always visit the gay areas and clubs,” says Glenn Hansen, Promotions and Marketing Manager at Stonewall. “A lot of clubs in America and London have become mixed. The hardest thing is the law because when it comes to who we let in our clubs, we cannot discriminate. I think this is where the problems started to occur. Straight guys hated going to gay clubs – now they enjoy it.”

Kooky promoter and DJ Seymour Butz is much more optimistic. “We have safe streets, great weather, lovely beaches, hot men and good health care. There are gay ghettos with drunk gawking straights everywhere in the world!”

While he cites Phoenix, The Flinders and Kens On Kensington as his favourite places to go in the East, he believes that there’s been a geographic shift back to the inner-west.

“[The pubs in Erskineville] are way friendlier and cheaper than Stonewall and last weekend saw Inquisition, Kooky and Manacle have the most vibrant and eclectic gay events all happen in the inner west,” says Butz. “Walk down any street and we gays are ubiquitous in Sydney. Come weekends the beaches, parks, restaurants, bars and backrooms are always full. The fact that we have no ‘official’ gay bar in Newtown has more to do with a golden opportunity waiting than lack of clientele or community. The most dynamic ‘alterna’ gay events like BadDog, Kooky or Scooter all happen in the inner-west. The Red Rattler is an amazing venue with a queer focus. Here’s to more and more!”

“Sydney has the potential to be a world leader when it comes to gay culture,” says Murphy. “But without some effort our title of being a gay destination could easily be lost. As it is, Sydney is a great holiday destination whether you’re gay or not, but to make it a must-go gay holiday destination is going to take some work. There has been a lot of speculation as to why gay spaces have dwindled, with no conclusive answer. What we do know for sure is that there are a huge number of us living here, but just not so many going out anymore.”

So what’s the missing ingredient?

“It’s not so much that gay Sydney is missing something, it’s that it has too much,” says Daniel, 40. “There are too many events competing, too much media for its size, too many sex websites and far too many men hooked up to them. There’s so much that there is nothing at all. There’s no longer a sense of courage and active exploration in defining what, who, and most importantly why we are the way we are. I believe that’s what the gay movement should be about, not the pursuit of middle class comfort and jacking off on Gaydar.”

Eames thinks that something has to give, and that Sydney needs a new gay village. “That’s what happens elsewhere. The gays move on to somewhere new and make it cool. Unfortunately Sydney makes this hard, with far too much emphasis placed on residents and not enough on the positives of having multiple centres of nightlife activity. Newtown practically closes down at midnight. Glebe could be a fun place if you could open a late bar there, but these possibilities just aren’t there. We may need to be creative and inhabit some quite industrial areas if we want spaces where we can make some noise and not have to deal with drunken straight kids.”

But is gay Sydney ready to move away from our gentrified inner-city neighbourhoods? Stuart Fraser co-owns The Clarence Hotel in Petersham, which houses Manacle, Sydney’s only leather bar. They made the decision to move away from the strip back in 2007, and he said the resounding negative that they hear is that Petersham is too far away. However, it’s the same distance from the Sydney CBD as Melbourne’s leather bar The Laird is from their CBD.

“When [we moved] there were a number of factors to consider. The changing feel of Oxford St was a very small part of our decision, in spite of what many people believe. The larger part of the Oxford St equation was the abundance of venues but more so that from Sunday night through to Thursday night the majority of venues in the area were so quiet, as was the street. Real estate prices were also a consideration. One venue we considered was a leasehold hotel – the purchase price was over $2.5 million…”

Fraser said that if people want gay venues then they have to remember that those venues have massive overheads and enormous rents or mortgages. He puts it quite simply – “use it or lose it.”

Leanne Lincoln, spokesperson from the City of Sydney said that Clover Moore’s Small Bars Bill is just one part of an overall strategy to help encourage a vibrant, boutique bar scene in Sydney.

“With serious problems of alcohol-related violence and anti-social behaviour, particularly on George Street, Oxford Street and Darlinghurst Road in the inner city, the new laws also create vital new powers to stop rogue venue operators creating problems for others. The new liquor licensing regime helps to protect residential amenity, build a more civilised drinking culture and provide more opportunities for the young musicians, artists and entrepreneurs to find a niche in our city.”

Lincoln says that as of June 25 there were 6 small bars operating in the City and another 13 waiting in the wings. Pocket Bar is a hot new addition to Darlinghurst, and the Council said that they haven’t refused any DAs for small bars to date, however they do place conditions on them to minimise impact on residential amenity and protect patron safety.

But is it just about laws and location, or does it run deeper than that? When was the last time gay Sydney made a bold political statement, like marching up Oxford Street with Fred Nile’s head on a platter? Do we all just want to be entertained? Has Sydney itself become politically apathetic and conservative?

“Gay Sydney just rolled over sold out – it’s that simple,” says Daniel. “It’s all about ‘the sell’ with the emphasis on publicity spin that never, ever delivers. And despite all the exhausting efforts it’s all ‘form’ without a speck of essence, which of course is the hard edge of the bargain when you sell your soul. When New Mardi Gras announce proudly about how much money they’ve made for the state and how pleased the government is, I find that extremely devaluing. Our worth is purely about the money we generate.”

Daniel thinks that when Sleaze Ball failed in 2005, New Mardi Gras should have fallen. “It would have meant no more big showground parties or a flagship event on the Events NSW master calendar, but it was a real opportunity to have the mainstream spotlight and expectations taken off of us, and we could have really grown again. What happened instead? We sold out to Gaydar, which has eroded the scene, Mardi Gras became a brand and it’s been hollow ever since.”

“It’s all about the headliners and the DJs these days,” says Jen. “I don’t give a fuck about the headliners. All the money that it raises and barely any of it goes back to the community, it all just gets poured into making the next one bigger and better! I’d love to see it all taken back to the streets.”

Karin, 40, agrees. “You know what I’d love to see for Mardi Gras one year? A silent march along Oxford Street. No glitter, no floats, no music – just the community walking together. But it’ll never happen.”

“Yes, I think Sydney is becoming more conservative and we are very much becoming a police state. I hope this will change!” says Hansen. “But the more we fight for equality the more we have to accept these changes to our venues. To be totally equal and not discriminate comes at a price. I believe the gay scene will stay strong and hopefully gay shops and restaurants will move in to all the empty shops in Oxford Street.”

“For years the gay movement pushed for acceptance – at our workplaces, by our family and friends and in everyday life in general,” says Murphy. “For a lot of people this goal has been achieved enough for them to enjoy their lives. Perhaps the goal-posts need to be moved and new goals set? Is it fair that what was once a safe street we could call our own is now full of aggression and we often don’t feel welcome there? Is it fair that we don’t have equal rights under Australian law? Is it fair to say gay people aren’t going out to gay venues anymore because they don’t feel there’s anything that exciting drawing them there? Is it fair to say that as a community on the whole, we’re not really doing that much about it? That sounds pretty conservative and non-political to me.”

“Our cowardly Labor government has been a huge let down to us as a community and we have a police commissioner from Hillsong,” says Butz. “Still, we don’t get killed for being gay. One day we’ll be allowed to get married or drink a beer and get a head-job simultaneously.”

Published: SameSame.com.au, 20 Aug 2009. Photo by Paul McDonald.

Let's talk about sex

2009-08-13T17:53:00.000-07:00

At the end of last year Same Same teamed up with Pollinate Research to conduct the Australian Gay and Lesbian Census, a national survey that asked questions to Australia’s gay and lesbian population about a wide range of issues that are important to our community. Last week, against the backdrop of protests around the country we looked at gay marriage. This week, it’s time to talk about sex.

Right up front, let’s get the most obvious finding out in the open – gay men have, on average had a much greater number of sexual partners than their lesbian counterparts. The Gay Census found that a quarter of gay male respondents have had over 100 partners in their lifetime and 10% have no idea how many people they’ve slept with. Men aged 35 and over make up the majority of the 100+ group, which makes sense – the older you are, the more notches on your bedpost.

Women on the other hand tell a very different story. 52% of lesbians have had between 2 and 10 sexual partners in their lifetime, compared to 17% of gay men and only 1% of lesbians are in the ‘100+’ and ‘don’t know’ categories – that’s a pretty radical difference.

According to Dr John Scott, from the School of Behavioural, Cognitive and Social Sciences at the University of New England, generalisations based on gender still apply to the gay world.

“There’s still a generalisation that women are more into romantic love. When you’re looking at gay men, sex for pleasure and sex for sex’s sake is more desirable.”

“I think the gay world is less fixated on certain sexual milestones,” says Nick, 28. “A lot of my straight friends could list the people they’ve slept with, where it happened, where they lost their virginity, how old they were at the time… I just never filed it all away like that. I guess I’ve lost count. The figures never seemed to matter to me.”

Dr. Scott says that from a biological point of view, female culture has placed importance on monogamy and loving each other in order to have sex. “Social evolutionists say that men are naturally more promiscuous and there’s not that stigma attached to sex for men. Sex is seen as a very masculine and privileged thing for males. Females that engage in a lot of sex are seen as not feminine, whereas men are rewarded for having a lot of it.”

While gay men on average have had a lot more partners, when it comes to how often we have sex, men seem to have a little more than lesbians, but not by much. 32% of men have sex more than once a week, compared to 24% of women. 44% of men have it between 1 to 4 times a month, compared to 37% of women. 22% of men and 34% of women have it less than once a month. A significant minority say they don’t have sex at all – 6% of men, 11% of women.

But if you think it’s the single people out there who are having the most sex, think again! Interestingly, the results found that both men and women have more sex when they’re in a serious relationship that’s still new – a little over 100 times a year, while on average the singles are having less than a quarter of that! Overall, lesbians tend to be more sexually active in casual relationships. Maybe the concept of ‘Lesbian Bed Death’ is true after all?

“When I got together with my ex-girlfriend we couldn’t keep our hands off of each other,” says Lucy, 35. “We did it anywhere and everywhere. It was exciting. But something else took over… We got comfortable. In the end, we started having threesomes – I pushed for that – and they just didn’t work at all. Too much jealousy and insecurity – we’d bottle everything up and then it would just explode.”

“I definitely have more sex when I’m in a new relationship,” says Raphael, 23. “But I think monogamy kills your sex life. I’ve been in long term relationships before with numerous partners at once and the sex has been great. When I used to try monogamy sex would peter out and it just wasn’t new or exciting – it didn’t work.”

“There was also a stigma 10 or 20 years ago that having a lot of sex was unhealthy,” says Dr. Scott. “But heterosexual culture is catching up with the idea of sex for sex’s sake or sex for pleasure. This has a lot to do with the rise of the internet and porn. Heterosexual culture used to see porn as deviant. If a wife found her husband looking at porn she would think he was a pervert, whereas now it’s much more acceptable than it was. People are starting to see that sex can be an end in itself, it doesn’t have to be attached to marriage or romance.”

As for long term relationships, unsurprisingly it was the women who dominated. When it comes to relationships lasting longer than 6 months, 58% of women have had between 2 to 4, compared to 48% of men. 8% of women haven’t had any, compared to 18% of men.

“When it comes to two men, marriage is a very low priority,” says Dr. Scott. “It may be a priority for some, but still a very low one.”

When it comes to experimentation, gay men are way more likely to experiment in all departments except one – straight sex. 70% of lesbians have had straight sex, compared to 43% of men.

When it comes to sex while drunk or high 81% of men have done it, and so have 78% of girls. 80% of men have had sex in a public place, compared to 72% of girls. When it comes to bondage and S&M the results are basically the same – 29% for men and 28% for women.

Men are far more likely to have group sex though – 73% compared to 35%. Men are also bigger fans of anonymity – 72% of men have had sex with someone without knowing their name, compared to 24% of girls.

When it comes to sleeping your way to the top, 5% of the boys admit to having sex to further their career. No women fessed up to having sex to get ahead in the workplace, however they are much more likely to sleep with a co-worker – 46% of women have done that, compared to 38% of men.

Experimentation seems closely linked to age – younger lesbians are more likely to be experimental than women over 35, however older gay men have a broader range of experiences than their younger counterparts.

Published: SameSame.com.au, 13 Aug 2009.

B52s: Shiny happy people

2009-07-27T15:09:00.000-07:00

Legendary band The B-52s will at last return to Australia this November for a number of theatre shows as well as six performances at ‘A Day On The Green’ outdoor winery events. The group ruled the ‘70s with a raft of hits, their 80s tracks Love Shack and Roam were international smashes and last year they released their eighth album Funplex. Flame-haired B-52 Kate Pierson sat down to chat about longevity, friendship and having a damn good time.

What can audiences expect when B-52s play in Australia?
We’ll be doing some of the new songs from our new CD Funplex, which is a year and a half old now. So we’ve been doing about six songs from that, but we do mostly our classic satisfying hits that everyone must hear. But I wonder if there are some songs that were really big hits in Australia that we should add to our playlist? I know that Cosmic Thing was a very big hit in Australia. We went to Brazil and we didn’t do Legal Tender and that was a really big hit there…

Were people yelling it at you?
Yeah. They were chanting it and we didn’t have it in our set and we hadn’t practiced it or anything!

Well it must be tough to choose. I mean, I’m 30 and speaking for myself I look through your back catalogue and it feels like different B-52s songs pop up as soundtracks for defining moments in my life.
I know. Basically, we do the songs that we think are the classics that everyone will want to hear, like Planet Claire, Private Idaho, Love Shack, Roam and Give Me Back My Man. We should research it.

What about Good Stuff?
No…

That was always one of my favourites.
Hmm… Well, we can’t do them all!

The longevity you guys have had is amazing. How do you explain the success of the B-52s?
I think it’s hard for a band that has a sense of humour to be taken seriously. We have messages and serious songs, and even songs that have a sense of humour still have a message, still have something to say. I always thought that was so important that people understand that. For a while there I thought that all the wigs and the colour was overshadowing the meaning of the music, but now I realise that the most wonderful thing that we have done is give people a good time, you know? People really bust loose and really have a good time.

And we also have a good time when we play. We started out as friends and miraculously all these years later we still are. We still make each other laugh and still hang out after the shows together. I think that the success and longevity has a lot to do with the fact that we share everything and we write everything collectively. So it’s truly a collective. There’s no leader, and it’s really hard to write collectively and have no leader! But it works! It means that everyone feels satisfied with things, everyone has a voice, there’s no dictator or someone calling the shots. We each give a very unique thing to the band that makes it a whole thing.

A lot of the shows that you are playing are in wine country in Australia. Have you ever been to Australian wine country before?
Yes we have. I think it was 2004. We played a winery in New Zealand and then we played a venue in Sydney, and we drove through wine country. But we haven’t played gigs there before – but the winery gig we played in New Zealand was absolutely beautiful. This will be my third trip to Australia, and the last time we were there we went to the Daintree Rainforest. Ah, I just loved it! It was fantastic. I just have to go back.

How has the reception been to Funplex?
It’s been great actually. We do about six or seven songs from the album in our set, and we’re planning on dropping a couple and introducing a few new ones when we go to Australia. Before we even released the CD people were singing along to the songs, so we had a great reception to Love In The Year 3000 and Hot Corner when we did them live… We get great reactions to those songs, as well as Pumpand Ultraviolet… We integrate them into the set in such a way that there isn’t a lull between the new stuff and the hits. People are really into it, and it keeps it all going at a furious pace. We don’t have any slow downs.

So both Fred Schneider and Keith Strickland are openly gay, and you’ve been in a relationship with a woman named Monica for a number of years now – so that leaves Cindy as the only straight B-52 left…
Yes, when I started seeing Monica it was my first relationship with a woman. I have to say, I was surprised at how smooth the transition was. It didn’t really cause a stir at all, it certainly didn’t within the band, and the outside world sees us as such a ‘gay band’ anyway. Let’s just say there were no raised eyebrows! There was some interest from the gay media and the gay fans, but it really hasn’t been a big deal.

You and Monica both run Kate’s Lazy Meadow, a holiday retreat in the Catskills in New York State, and the décor looks very much like something out of B-52s video. How hands on are you both in running the motel?
Well it was Monica that got it up and running – I was in charge of all the decorating, while Monica essentially runs the business. It’s such a working great relationship. I feel very lucky to be working with my partner at the motel and with my friends in the B-52s. We have a small number of staff and Monica is very hands-on in running the place – if there’s a problem she is someone who would rather do it herself, if there’s plumbing that needs fixing she’ll be the first to jump in. Neither of us had any idea of what we were doing when we started, but we just took charge and worked it out as we went.

You’ve had a really impressive career, even just a glance at the bio shows iconic moments like your work with REM on Shiny Happy People and Iggy Pop on Candy. What would you say have been your biggest career highlights?
Well, I would have to say that those two things were really amazing. I love REM and they’re good friends, so that was really fun. And Iggy Pop is an icon, so that was an amazing thing. Cindy, Fred and I just sang with Junior Senior. I love doing collaborations, I love singing on other people’s records. I just think that the highlight is that we have a new record!

Published: SameSame.com.au. 27 July 2009.