Campaigning Kiwi journalist married her partner on first day it became legal

Barbara Farrelly, who has died aged 61, made her name as the editor of two Sydney lesbian and gay publications during the 1990s. More recently, her writing about living with a chronic lung disease brought her a new audience.

The Kiwi-born Farrelly loved life and all it had to offer, particularly reading, gardening, cooking, cryptic crosswords, conversing, cats and gongoozling – a word she delighted in meaning to stare idly at the ocean.

She was born in Otorohanga, the fourth of Patrick and June Farrelly’s eight children. She grew up on their farm, survived a flood that washed the family’s pigs away and a fire that burnt down their home.

She was 15 when she started work as a journalist, and by

21 was news editor of four Auckland suburban papers.

She was also a playwright and had three of her works performed in New Zealand. Which Side of the Wall? and Women and Madness were performed in the Waikato Arts Festival, while The Waiting Room opened the 1977 Women’s Convention.

A lesbian feminist activist as a teenager, Farrelly objected to International Women’s Day as it was ‘‘one day for women and 364 for men’’. She found New Zealand parochial, recalling the first pizza shop in Auckland where people thought the olives were grapes. When a police officer sexually assaulted a gay man, she left in 1981 for South Australia where the premier, Don Dunstan, wore pink shorts and valued the arts.

There Farrelly worked for the Adelaide Advertiser, and later as publications officer in the NSW government premier’s department. In 1992, she began work as a reporter at the gay and lesbian community newspaper Sydney Star Observer, becoming its first female editor the following year. It was the height of the Aids crisis in Sydney, and each fortnight the paper contained dozens of death notices.

It was while organising the Reclaim the Night rally in 1992 that Farrelly first crossed paths with Lesbians on the Loose editor Frances Rand. They began a relationship the following year.

A year later, Rand persuaded her to leave the Star and join forces at LOTL. Farrelly’s nose for a good story and lively writing style were rewarded with huge growth in the magazine’s readership. Many of the stories were picked up by mainstream media.

Farrelly and Rand used to wear matching outfits to the Mardi Gras parade each year. They went as schoolgirls, 1970s feminists in badge-covered overalls and, after a story about the difficulties faced by a Muslim lesbian, wearing chadors. This was the 1990s, though, and many parade-goers thought they were nuns.

One year, dressed as Crimean War nurses,