Tall tales and true from Australia’s very queer past

Queer Oz Folk is here to celebrate Australia’s very queer history. From the arrival of the First Fleet (and maybe someday we will find even earlier stories) through to contemporary lgbtiq+ life, via sodomites, the ‘flash mobs’ of female convicts, inverts and perverts and kamps and camps, this is a history of people, places and events we rarely get taught at schools. We are drawing on nearly 50 years of research and publishing by academics, journalists and community historians to bring you stories of pleasure and pain, cowardice and courage, secrecy and vibrant visibility.

We will update pretty regularly with news, notices for Australian queer history books old and new and — a special passion — activism in the decade before Mardi Gras.

Queer Oz Folk is also a publishing project, a series within the Interventions stable (https://interventions.org.au/), established in 2020 to bring good quality, readable, affordable queer history to interested audiences. We aim to publish one or two books a year.

You can check out our books here, and if you like what you see, they can be purchased in Melbourne at Hares and Hyenas (hares-hyenas.com.au), the New International Bookshop (https://nibs.org.au/), Solidarity Salon; in Sydney at The Bookshop Darlinghurst (www.thebookshop.com.au) … Or ask your local bookshop to order one in for you.