How the Murder of an Academic Changed Adelaide’s Queer Community

WORDS ZOE ROSHKOV

This article may contain sensitive topics that may be disturbing for some readers. This includes content related to violence against LGBTQ+ members and mentions of death.

Adelaide’s history with the queer community had a very dark beginning, from hiding in the shadows and being driven underground by threats of violence and discrimination.

The 1970’s were a time in South Australia’s history where homosexual acts were criminalised and to be found out as a gay person, was to be in a position of danger. The history of the LGBTQIA+ community has often been hidden from view, but many individuals throughout the past have lived radical private lives outside the accepted sexual norms.

This reality was made brutally clear to South Australia in 1972 after the murder of gay Adelaide University law lecturer, Dr George Duncan, who was thrown into the Karrawirra Parri/River Torrens and drowned. The crime, still unpunished, horrified many in the South Australian community. It revolted mainstream society so much that disbelief turned to outrage and reform was on everyone’s agenda.

Through the small step in activism of the first Adelaide pride walk, this ignited social concern about discrimination to minorities and had aims of recognising and celebrating gay lifestyles. This liberation movement occurred, again, in the shadow of George Duncan’s death.

Sadly, it was the killing of Dr. Duncan that became a catalyst for change. It was this, among other events that lead SA to be the first jurisdiction to decriminalise male homosexual acts.

One of Adelaide’s gay elders, Will Sergeant, lived through this oppression. He has seen queer life go from a criminal offence to marriage equality in Australia. He experienced a world when living as a gay man remained difficult and dangerous, and discrimination continued, but he was also part of the fight for law reform and a safer future for the queer community, as a 1970’s gay liberationist.

Sergeant carried his banner proudly outside of the shadows. He attended the first Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, and was a participant in Adelaide’s first Pride March in 1973 which was an early, prominant push for queer rights and positive changes to law over these 50 years.

Will Sergeant and his alter ego

Dr Gertrude Glossip have been a driving force for change in queer acceptance and representation in Adelaide. Since its conception in 1997, Gertrude has had a fundamental role in South Australia’s Feast Festival. Known as ‘The Queen of The walk’ Gertrude has been hosting rainbow walking tours of Adelaide’s queer history at every Feast.

This year marks 25 seasons of Gertrude’s history walks. The experienced captain details a noholds barred history lesson of how the queer community has gone from hiding in the shadows to making a complete 180 onto the Adelaide CBD where people feel it is safe to celebrate openly and proudly.

For the past two years, Gertrude’s history walks have been based at Port Adelaide, sponsored by the Port Adelaide and Enfield City Library. “A marvellous step in the right direction for queer representation having a mainstream organisation promote and sponsor Feast Festival,” Gertrude says.

“Anything that fosters education and understanding and embracing inclusivity is really wonderful for the general population,” Glossip explains.