The comedian’s new ABC documentary Queerstralia is a sprawling history of LGBTQ+ people in Australia, covering lesbian convict gangs, gaybashing and trans liberation – but with humour
uesday 2 December 1727: the day queer people in Australia were first recorded by Europeans. A Dutch ship captain wrote in his journals of two boys who were found “committing the sorrowful and godforsaken act which, god forbid, shall afflict plagues over our peoples and island”. The boys refused to confess; as punishment they were left to die, marooned on separate islands.
Does Coombs Marr now feel that Gadsby was right? “God yes!” she half-shouts at me. She’s spent weeks on the edits and looks frazzled. “Making a queer history of Australia? What a terrifying, absolutely misguided, fool’s errand of an impossible task. It’s ridiculous. She’s right. It has been incredible but also – we were never going to get it right.”
When Coombs Marr sat down with many of the interviewees, the first question they asked her was: why comedy? Why make a documentary that is as much about making people laugh as it is about pain and persecution? “People were worried that we’d be making fun of people, but we’re making fun of the absurdity of the situation. Like, why were all these old white men in powdered wigs in England so concerned with who was putting what in whose bottom? That is inherently strange. But the people who had their lives destroyed by those laws, that’s not funny. I’m not a monster.”
A strange consequence of Britain’s eagle-eyed monitoring of convicts is that Australia now has a uniquely detailed record of queerness; with so many men and so few women, Australia was eventually dubbed “the sodom of the South Pacific”.
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