Publisher: Michael Glynn and The Sydney Star, Sydney, NSW.

Format: Fourteen newspaper issues, 16pp each, 42.5 x 29cm.

Issues included are:
1980–1981: Volume 2, numbers 1, 22, 24.
1981–1982: Volume 3, numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 17, 18, 21, 22.
1983: Volume 4, number 14.

The Sydney Star, later The Star, was launched in 1979 by Michael Glynn (1948–1996), an American who came to Sydney and developed the ethos ‘think gay, buy gay.’ Issues were published fortnightly as “a contribution to the building of the gay movement and the growth of gay consciousness.”

The paper became a gay business entertainment guide – covering parties, bath house events, and Mardi Gras – as well as a rallying political advocate and voice of the community when LGBT people were being actively pursued by the police pre-decriminalisation in 1984.

The Star covered issues such as police conduct at gay venues along Oxford Street, including raids and bashings by police officers (evidence later used by the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission for an inquiry into the misconduct of police along Oxford Street); the campaign to decriminalise homosexuality in New South Wales, which was enacted on May 22, 1984; and the then spate of unsolved gay murders in Sydney, including that of Peter Parkes.

These issues fall three months short of the AIDS crisis taking hold in Australia, illustrating a “golden age of the gay/lesbian print media.” The first reported case of AIDS in Australia was published in the May 1983 issue of The Star. The last issue in this collection is dated February 11, 1983.

Michael Glynn died of AIDS-related complications in 1996, but the publication he founded still exists today as the Star Observer. His photographic archive is held with the City of Sydney.

Ref: Dominic O’Grady, Preaching to the Perverted: the life and times of Michael Glynn, 2013.

Minor tears to some edges.

The Sydney Star always had a section dedicated to Entertainment that contained a “Dance Top40” compiled by Steve Cribb, Michael Glynn’s partner. As a celebration of what it might have felt like to go clubbing on Sydney’s Oxford Street pre-AIDS, I’ve combed through each chart and added the highlights to the below playlist, for your pleasure.