The Australian Lesbian and Gay Archives

Museum in Melbourne, VIC

The Australian Lesbian and Gay Archives was established in 1978 at the Fourth National Homosexual Conference. We are based in Melbourne and operate with the assistance of members and supporters interstate. The Archives is the only community group in Australia that actively collects and preserves lesbian and gay material from across the country, and makes it readily accessible. The collections include material of national or international scope, but the heart of the Archives’ work is the collection and preservation of the historical life of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities of Australia.

From the time of the Gold Rush to the battles against AIDS, the collections save our rich and diverse histories for us and future generations. The works of writers, artists, photographers, and performers; the papers of leaders; the records of community organizations; the posters, flyers, buttons, matchbooks of political movements or trends or bars and other venues; the stories that record our own lives and those of our lovers and friends … all these document the history of our community and of the individuals who form it. The Archives preserves these materials and makes them accessible to students, historians, and anyone else who is interested.

We preserve historical materials and make them accessible to students, historians and anyone else who is interested. We publish books and other materials on gay and lesbian histories. We auspice the Australian Homosexual Histories conference series. We run a Queer History Walk during Melbourne’s annual Midsumma gay and lesbian festival. We award a prize for undergraduate theses deposited with the Archives. We manage an e-group, ozhomohist, for posting news items on issues and events about Australia’s gay, lesbian and queer histories. We give in-kind support to non-profit projects that have similar or parallel aims to ours.