Heritage NSW has rejected a second application to recognise Kings Beach — which is located about nine kilometres south of Byron Bay — for its longstanding significance to LGBTQIA+ communities across New South Wales and beyond.
The nomination was supported by extensive scholarly research from the Tweed Regional Museum and backed by politicians, academics and community organisations, including independent MP Alex Greenwich, Shadow Minister for Heritage Jacqui Munro, University of Sydney Professor Kane Race, Qtopia historian Garry Wotherspoon, ACON and Queer Family.
While Heritage NSW admitted that Kings Beach “may meet the threshold for State heritage significance" it deemed the listing application "not a thematic or strategic priority for listing".
Despite the well-documented under-representation of LGBTQIA+ history in New South Wales and elsewhere, since they listed the Sydney Mardi Gras Parade Route, and a handful of other sites of queer significance, Heritage NSW appears to believe that their job recording queer history is done.
With this rejection, Heritage NSW are ignoring ACON CEO Michael Woodhouse, who identified Kings Beach as a place of more than fifty years' significance to LGBTQIA+ communities and a site associated with health outreach, grief, remembrance and community care, particularly during and following the HIV/AIDS crisis of the 80s and 90s.
Heritage NSW Ignores Community Plea to Protect Kings Beach. Photos by Maurizio Viani.
Advocates say Heritage NSW are ignoring Professor Kane Race, who described Kings Beach as one of the most important queer communal and cultural spaces in regional Australia, and Heritage consultant Garry Wotherspoon, who argued that Kings Beach represents an important component of Australia's intangible queer heritage and should be accorded heritage status.
Queer Family CEO Aiden Gentle stated:
“Due to discrimination, criminalisation, and social stigma, LGBTQ+ people have historically been pushed to the margins of Australian society and often excluded from mainstream public spaces. As a result, places such as Kings Beach became vital refuges where LGBTQ+ people could gather, socialise, express themselves freely, and build community away from prejudice and surveillance”.
Dozens of letters from queer community members were also sent to Minister for Heritage Penny Sharpe, pleading for recognition and protection of Kings Beach.
Heritage NSW’s rejection of the well-researched and well-supported nomination for Kings Beach’s listing suppresses an important aspect of queer history in a regional area of NSW that, through the 1973 Aquarius Festival and Tropical Fruits, the Lismore-based LGBTQIA+ organisation established in 1988, has a long and deep association with the queer community of NSW.
This new rejection has prompted Shadow Minister for Heritage Jacqui Munro to write to Minister for Heritage Penny Sharpe, “calling on her to use her ministerial powers to reverse this decision”.
We now wait. With community members, historians and politicians united in support of the listing, the question on everyone's lips is: will Minister Penny Sharpe intervene?
