Gay bar k road

When I was 14, I knew I was different. This is where Amy was staying when he met her. My father only said things that he thought were relevant. So maybe he told me because he thought I might be interested or that I should know about her. Whatever it was, I have been fascinated by Amy Bock ever since and have even collected objects from her life, documenting her and her role in our gender history.

She always pleaded guilty for every charge. He took me to the gallery, where his work was part of the opening exhibition. I loved it and he told me about art school. We were not your typical farming family: my brothers had been arrested during Vietnam War protests. My father was very upset about the police showing up at his house about that, but he swallowed it.

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I was the last child in the family — all my brothers and sisters had left home and gone to university — and at school I was put ahead, so I had always been around older students. I wanted out of Inglewood and I think everyone knew it. I felt it was a world people needed to understand and I would be the one to capture it. I was part of that world, too.

In those days you were either butch or femme. Femmes wore lipstick and dresses and never gay to the bar themselves because they were bought a drink. There were even separate butch and femme toilets in bar clubs. Labelling was quite simple at that time: you were either a gay man, a gay road or doing drag.

People feel a need to say who they are. Even that label will probably change. The gay and drag scene around K Road was very small in those days. Everything to do with being gay or camp, or expressing sexuality in a different way, was illegal. Most of the people in my early photos died young. The deaths were sad and often brutal.

Performance art was taking off and, as I had recorded performances, there was a natural progression to perform myself. We were assertive — we just walked in and took over the club. The deal with the Pink Pussycat was that I would supply Rainton with images of the performance.

The idea of gender in performance was not very well received, and there was no debate around whether it was about gender or sexuality.