This year is the 36th anniversary of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardis Gras. The annual parade on 1 March marks the end of a month-long festival of events that many Sydneysiders today take for granted. But as Nicole and Tim discussed this morning, the parade has had a turbulent history. Over the years the parade has gone through a lot to become the exciting, famous and well-loved event it is today. It survived thanks to the determination of the city's gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered and queer inhabitants, who perceived its significance very early on. The first mardis gras parade in Sydney started as part of a worldwide International Gay Solidarity day to commemorate the Stonewall riots, a series of violent demonstrations by members of the gay community against a police raid that took place at Stonewall Inn in New York in 1969. Crowds gathered at Taylor Square in the evening of the 24 June, 1978. As the parade moved down Oxford Street toward Hyde Park, police intervened, confiscating the lead truck and arresting the driver. This angered the crowd who then marched up William St to Darlinghurst where they clashed with police reinforcements who had blocked the road. The Australian reported around 1,000 people singing and dancing down Oxford Street until they met with police. Then the mardi gras became 'a two-hour spree of screaming, bashing and arrests' with police violently arresting 53 people. The  heavy handed approach by the police sparked nationwide protests and demonstrations in the months that followed. Forced to act, the New South Wales Government repealed the Summary Offences Act a year later, removing restrictions on citizens wanting to assemble in a public space. It took a further six years before an act of parliament was passed decriminalising male homosexual acts for those above the age of 18.

Discriminatory and homophobic attitudes surrounded the parade in the early years but that gradually started to change in the early 1990s, as it became the largest celebration of its kind in the world. The parade started to be seen for its tourism value for the city with newspapers quoting academics who had calculated that the Mardi Gras was attracting millions of dollars of income from overseas visitors. Eventually, it also became an important facet of Sydney’s cultural life. You can read more about the history of the mardis gras in Garry Wotherspoon's essay for the Dictionary, Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. Or you can listen to Diane Minnis, who attended the very first parade and described what happened on that historic night, in a moment of ‘mass defiance’. --- Many thanks to Nicole Cama for standing in for Lisa while she is away working hard on her book. Tune in again next week for more Sydney stories with the Dictionary of Sydney on 2SER Breakfast with Tim Higgins, on 107.9 FM.