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Speaker 1: Jersey and Amanda jam Nation. Well, yesterday, fifty thousand people

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Speaker 1: walked with confidence across Sydney Harbor Bridge, feeling loved and accepted,

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Speaker 1: most from the LGBTQIA plus community, and many others there

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Speaker 1: proudly to support. But it wasn't too long ago, on

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Speaker 1: a cold June night, that the first Mardi Gras began

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Speaker 1: with an air of optimism and excitement. As crowds gathered

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Speaker 1: at Taylor Square, hundreds of people began streaming down Oxford Street,

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Speaker 1: decked out in costumes and makeup. They chatted out of

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Speaker 1: the bars and into the streets. However, as they continue

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Speaker 1: down Oxford Street, a familiar dread encroached. Some of the

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Speaker 1: partygoers felt the atmosphere change as police became agitated. One

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Speaker 1: of those brave men who's been there from the beginning

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Speaker 1: when things weren't so accepted, an original member of the

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Speaker 1: so called seventy eights, is Karl Slotkosky, and he joins us. Now, Hello, Carl, Hello,

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Speaker 1: how are you?

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Speaker 2: Carl?

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Speaker 1: Well, let's look back, Karl at what happened in the

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Speaker 1: seventy eight is you're walking down Oxford Street the mood changes.

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Speaker 1: Why was this such a pivotal moment of history. Why

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Speaker 1: the seventy eight is so famous.

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Speaker 2: Well, it was a serious miscalculation on the part of

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Speaker 2: the police, I got to say. But the significance of

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Speaker 2: all those events that took place back then was that

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Speaker 2: they intersected with a change in the mood of this

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Speaker 2: city and a belief that the police and the laws

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Speaker 2: are these upon minorities, and that intersected with the growing

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Speaker 2: sense of community within the LGBTQI group, mainly sent it

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Speaker 2: on Oxford Street. But those events in June triggered a

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Speaker 2: major campaign which we call drop the Charges, and that's

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Speaker 2: what I was involved in. That marshaled them two thousand

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Speaker 2: people on the fifteenth of July, which was the biggest

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Speaker 2: gay demonstration we'd ever seen in Australia. All this stuff

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Speaker 2: intersected and it marks a turning point. And it was

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Speaker 2: quite a while ago, you know, it was forty five

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Speaker 2: years Still.

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Speaker 1: Here, it's hard for us to imagine a time when

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Speaker 1: being homosexual and being attracted to the opposite sex was illegal.

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Speaker 2: Yes, well I'm sure I'm thinking back. You know, we

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Speaker 2: just went out and lived our lives. There was a

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Speaker 2: small minority of us caught the hard edge of the law.

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Speaker 2: I knew people who had been in prison and notorious

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Speaker 2: a jail in comer, But for most of us we

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Speaker 2: navigated our way through a kind of half world of illegality.

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Speaker 2: Everything was illegal, and for some of us actually there

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Speaker 2: was a bit that added a bit for the fun

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Speaker 2: of it. All the people who miss those times.

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Speaker 3: All, well, I guess it makes you different, I suppose.

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Speaker 3: But when you look at how far we've come. And

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Speaker 3: also because the police weren't big friends of the gay

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Speaker 3: community back in those days, to see that have the

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Speaker 3: police have their own float in this year's Mardi Gras,

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Speaker 3: that's a that's a real changing of the guard, isn't it.

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Speaker 2: Well, yes, in the way that the police interpret themselves

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Speaker 2: as a guard. Uh yeah, it's it's a problem for

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Speaker 2: a lot of us were we We aren't opposed to

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Speaker 2: the police, to lgbt q I police, especially marching. The

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Speaker 2: major issue is the uniform and the guns. Interesting, but

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Speaker 2: you know that's that's triggering for a lot of people

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Speaker 2: that I have to say that there's a real that's

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Speaker 2: been advanced to me about why do they have to

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Speaker 2: much armed? Because there are essentially they may be called

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Speaker 2: upon to intervene in a situation, and we do have

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Speaker 2: situations in the matagraph parade and we and I can

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Speaker 2: remember twenty odd years ago being grabbed by a very

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Speaker 2: handsome young man in sequin shorts and not much else

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Speaker 2: who hauled me into a doorway and I thought something

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Speaker 2: was going to happen, But then he showed me his

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Speaker 2: badge and he said they'd been a shooting. Now we

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Speaker 2: don't hear about these things, but there had actually been

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Speaker 2: been a shooting. No, nobody was actually injured. That these

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Speaker 2: things happened during these big healing.

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Speaker 3: Was was he undercover? Was he an undercover police?

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Speaker 2: Oh? Yes, yes, yes, And he had a block.

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Speaker 4: Seduy's glock, Yes he did so, Carl, through all of

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Speaker 4: this history you've just spoken about, how did it feel

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Speaker 4: as the seventy eight is to be the first across

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Speaker 4: the bridge yesterday?

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Speaker 2: Oh? It was wonderful, pretty wonderful. And you will have

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Speaker 2: seen some at some of the shots where we where

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Speaker 2: we've become fairly adept at wrangling the cameras as a group,

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Speaker 2: but yeah, it was extraordinary. I've seen one shot of

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Speaker 2: us just under going under the arch with fifty thousand

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Speaker 2: people behind us, and that was truly awe inspiring, an

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Speaker 2: extraordinary feeling.

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Speaker 3: It's congratulations to you, Carl. It's just, you know, I

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Speaker 3: guess as acceptance becomes more and more, we can only

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Speaker 3: you know, I think we're becoming more enlightened.

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Speaker 1: Well, there's still a ways to go to yes.

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Speaker 2: And one thing that bridge. When we were doing it,

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Speaker 2: we were remembering the people who are not able to

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Speaker 2: do a bridge walk events like that in countries all

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Speaker 2: over the world where things are not as liberal. That

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Speaker 2: was in our minds while we were doing that.

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Speaker 3: Well, good work and it's worth following up the story.

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Speaker 3: If you'd like to check out about the seventy yders,

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Speaker 3: go to seventy eights dot org dot are you cal

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Speaker 3: Thank you for joining us.

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Speaker 2: You're very welcome.