‘Men were scattering everywhere’: inquiry hears of string of violent incidents at Sydney gay beats
Men at a popular Sydney gay beat had to scatter when a car careered towards them “like it was on a kangaroo shoot”, an inquiry has heard.
The car’s headlights and an apparent spotlight were blazing as the car drove at men at Rushcutters Bay Park in Sydney’s east in the 1990s.
“It was a busy Saturday night and men were scattering everywhere, running like the dickens,” Barry Charles said on Tuesday.
The 72-year-old longtime gay rights activist was giving evidence at the New South Wales Special Commission of Inquiry into LGBTIQ hate crimes.
It is investigating historical hate crimes against the queer community, particularly a wave of gay hate homicides and other crimes in Sydney during the Aids epidemic of the 1980s.
Describing himself as having been a “beat queen”, Charles said he had enjoyed visiting beats and having sex with men in parks and other venues.
“While as a young man from Punchbowl (in Sydney’s west) I had no idea how to find a gay bar, beats were something I could find,” he said.
He frequented them between 1969 and 1998, visiting at least 40 different ones around Sydney.
The sex was mostly anonymous and wordless, as the majority wanted to get it over and done with as quickly as possible.
“Hanging around for longer than necessary was dangerous, because you knew you could be apprehended, or were in danger of violence and some men were at risk of being exposed as gay.”
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Charles listed a string of violent incidents he witnessed or experienced at beats.
Referring to the Rushcutters Bay incident that he likened to “a kangaroo shoot”, Charles said he managed
to sprint over the footbridge away from the car.
“I never saw who was in the car or what they did, because I just ran for it.”
As far as he knew, the only way a car could gain access was via a padlocked gate, usually only opened when council workers mowed the lawn.
“So I have always had the belief, rightly or wrongly, that it must have been a raid by police,” he said.
The first time he witnessed violence was about 1971 at a Tempe park in Sydney’s inner west, when he saw a group of youths jump out of a car and chase a man who was fleeing on the median strip of the highway.
A larger youth was wielding a length of car bumper bar.
One night in late 1987 he walked to the Alexandria Park toilet block beat in inner Sydney, but no one was around.
When he came out, a group of young people sitting across the street started asking him: “Are you a poofter? Are you a faggot?”
He tried to walk away but they came after him carrying lengths of white PVC pipe, which they used to hit him before wrestling him to the ground.
Most of the boys looked like they were about 14 or 15, while one looked older.
Charles broke free but they caught him again, before men came out of a nearby house.
Police were called but he felt they were more interested in what he had been doing rather than what had happened to him.
In 1988 he was again bashed in Alexandria Park after attending a “black party”, dressed in a black leather jacket and biker boots.
Two adolescent boys, maybe 14 or 15, started yelling at him, before one chased him.
“He was completely frenzied and seemed to me to be very emotionally disturbed,” he said.
“He grabbed a young sapling from a tree and started to hit me with it.”
Luckily, a car pulled up and the couple inside got him into the van.
“The boy was yelling at them, ‘He’s a faggot, he raped my little sister’.”
“None of it made any sense.”
The hearing continues.