BOOK REVIEW FIGHTING FOR OUR LIVES
A tale of illness, death, hate, discrimination, unity, hope and ultimately triumph: Australia’s response to HIV/AIDS.
On February 7, 1985, a crucial meeting took place when 400 members of Sydney’s gay community squeezed into the New South Wales Teacher’s Federation Building. The tension in the air was palpable.
For more than two years they had watched in horror as AIDS swept across the globe, and now it had crashed upon Australian shores. People were beginning to die, in growing numbers. The prime target of the disease was gay men, sex workers and injecting drug users, so there was an understandable amount of fear in the air.
Worse, the epidemic had been accompanied by a media-driven cacophony of homophobic hysteria, which reached a peak before Christmas when three babies in Queensland died after receiving blood donated by a gay man.
Politicians called for extreme action, including mandatory testing of gay men and quarantining of all who tested positive.
Meanwhile, gangs of angry men roamed Oxford Street, kicking in doors and bashing anybody they caught. The entire gay community, so recently free to express itself after millennia of oppression, was at risk of being wiped out.
This would be one of the most significant nights in Australian gay history, on par with the first Mardi Gras in 1978. At that inaugural march they took a stand to fight for their rights. Now they would band together, as they had never done before, to fight for their lives. By the time they emerged from that tense meeting, they had created the AIDS Council Of New South Wales (ACON), which would become the backbone of Sydney’s response to the developing crisis that engulfed the gay community – and much of society – for more than a decade.
The story of those dramatic years is told in gripping detail by
Nick Cook, in his
This is our origin story and it is ultimately a lifeaffirming tale of triumph over adversity.
book Fighting For Our Lives.
(Long-time DNA readers will remember Cook, who was once our Features Editor, from his celebrity interviews, his thought-provoking
political essays and his ambush of Fred Nile. One highlight was the day he received a phone call from Molly Meldrum to inform him that Elton John enjoyed reading his stories.)
There are generally just two types of books in Australia on the HIV crisis: academic texts that examine the broad medical and political implications of the epidemic, or heart-rending memoirs, offering a microcosmic glimpse of life at ground zero for individuals impacted by the virus. Both have a fundamental place – and Australia needs far more stories from those who lived through the crisis – but they leave a
ACON’s Safe Sex Summer launch in 1989. glaring gap in the middle.
Cook straddles this successfully, creating an account that is both informative and highly engaging. He brings the characters to life, creating an enthralling narrative that makes it very easy to digest the more mundane administrative details. You do not need a university degree to read this, nor do you need intimate knowledge of life within the affected communities.
“The more I learned about the epidemic, the more ashamed I felt about how much I didn’t know before,” says Cook. “From very early on I was determined to reach the widest possible audience, to hopefully assist in efforts to keep alive the memories of these incredible heroes.”
One of the greatest services Cook provides to his subjects is depicting them warts and all. This is certainly no hagiography. For instance, ACON’s first president Lex Watson is highlighted as the trailblazing warrior for gay rights that he was, but he also comes across as arrogant and difficult to work with. The dramatic circumstances of his ejection from the presidency, less than a year into his first term, are examined in detail.
These three-dimensional characterisations not only make for a entertaining read, they also make the incredible achievements all the more remarkable. For instance, did you know that Australia was the first place in the world to use safe sex messages that encouraged sex instead of warning against it? Or one of the only places to actively seek out men at beats to educate them? Meanwhile, our rates of infection among injecting drug users have been miniscule compared to other countries and there has never been a recorded transmission of HIV from a female sex worker. The successes speak
A candlelight rally at Taylor Square in the early ’90s; the darkest days of the crisis. for themselves.
The book spends much time exploring the memorable actions of our AIDS heroes. These include Bill Whittaker, who took charge of ACON in the late 1980s and turned it into a professional organisation, and Don Baxter who led it with indomitable courage throughout the darkest years of the early 1990s.
However, great effort is also taken to shine a light on the heroes who did not survive the crisis, those whose names are at risk of being forgotten. Outstanding individuals such as Paul Young, Andrew Morgan, twins Andrew and Don Carter, Norman “Beryl” Boyle and Bruce Brown are all carefully brought to life within these pages and their selfless efforts memorialised in a way that should have happened long ago.
Cook is clearly affected by the life, and untimely death, of Terry Giblett, who established ACON’s HIV Support team. In the prologue he tells of the traumatic experience of seeing page after page of obituaries to young men from The Sydney Star Observer and writes, “The night I found the face of Terry Giblett… it was like a punch to the stomach and I wept.”
Cook’s central thesis is that an enormous part of Australia’s AIDS history is missing. The notable achievements of the doctors and politicians have been well recorded – and deservedly so – but there is a third element that needs to be acknowledged.
“It was the community groups that bound everything else together and made Australia’s response one of the most successful in the world,” he says. “When the hospitals weren’t providing sufficient care it was Community Support Network that stepped forward to do the job; when the welfare system was failing it was the Bobby Goldsmith Foundation that supported people living with HIV; when the politicians were faltering in their commitment it was ACT UP who kept them on task with their dramatic protests.”
Fighting For Our Lives does not shy away from the hardest parts of the epidemic and at times it makes for difficult reading, particularly for those who lived through the darkest years. The middle chapters, dealing with the early 1990s when there were multiple funerals a day, are heart-rending and you will need to keep a box of tissues close at hand.
Ultimately, though, this is not a depressing a book. In fact, it is the exact opposite. These are not just unfortunate events that happened to our community, they are the fires our community passed through to become a single entity. This is our origin story and it is ultimately a life-affirming tale of triumph over adversity. This is the best account yet of the community’s struggle against AIDS and it should be required reading for all gay men.
As Cook writes, this is a story that must never be forgotten.
The entire gay community, so recently free to express itself after millennia of oppression, was at risk of being wiped out.