CAMP – where it all began
Image: Robyn Kennedy, co-author of CAMP: Australia’s pioneer homosexual rights activists. Image: supplied
Robyn Kennedy and Robyn Plaister were there in 1978, at the protest that spawned Mardi Gras as we know it today. They were there much earlier, too; in 1970 when Campaign Against Moral Persecution (CAMP) was founded, initiating the Pride movement in Australia that fueled the first LGBTQI rights marches and was the precursor to the infamous 1978 riot.
Kennedy and Plaister tell this backstory in a stunning new book, CAMP: Australia’s pioneer homosexual rights activists . Replete with rare archival images and stories shared by members of CAMP from across Australia, the book is a visceral journey through the timeline of ordinary heroes and unknown events that led to the freedoms we experience today. Recognising the power of these stories, Kennedy commissioned playwright, Elias Jamieson Brown to write CAMP, a play that brings to life some of the many moving stories in the book.
CAMP interweaves the narratives of four central characters with a selection of true stories: the body of a murdered lecturer found floating in the River Torrens; a young woman who evades a lobotomy meant to cure her sexuality; a single mum branded as abnormal, and other stories that are absurd, egregious and sometimes even funny.
At ground-level, the 1970s was a milieu of psychedelia, punk, and rebellion and a flourishing of movements for individual rights, but in the upper echelons – at governing level – a white, middle class, conservative mindset ruled.
CAMP reveals the barely surmountable challenges faced by the LGBTQI+ community; tales of resilience, bravery, triumph mirrored against vile stories of murder, corruption, hate, injustice. It is at once heart-breaking and inspirational.
