Sydney is notoriously cavalier with its history. The list of significant sites and buildings that have been erased is dishearteningly long.

The city’s queer history is even more vulnerable to the passage of time, says theatre director Kate Gaul.

“For a lot of young people today, the idea that the rights and visibility the queer community has today didn’t exist until 40 years ago is hard for them to get their heads around.”

Gaul’s new production for Siren Theatre Company, CAMP, aims to celebrate some of the heroes of Australia’s gay rights movement and fill in some of the gaps in our knowledge of life for LGBTQIA+ people in the 1960s and 1970s –  when sex between consenting male adults was illegal (and carried penalties of 14-years imprisonment), lesbians were dismissed as wilfully aberrant or mentally ill, and to ‘come out of the closet’ all but guaranteed a difficult professional and personal life.

Gay rights protests in Sydney in the late 1970s. Photo supplied

The main inspiration behind CAMP is the 2022 book of the same name, written by Robyn Kennedy and Robyn Plaister, a commemoration of the achievements of Australia’s first national gay...