In an inner-city Sydney terrace house, you can feel the love that was shared between Peter de Waal and Peter Bonsall-Boone.
The pair shared more than 50 years together before “Bon”, as he was best known, died from cancer in 2017, just months before same-sex marriage was legalised in Australia.
“Bon was the one who used to talk about getting married,” Peter, 82, tells SBS News. “He used to say, ‘Wow, wouldn’t it be wonderful to be a recognised homosexual couple.’”
“I realised that there were some real benefits and I certainly found when I had to wind up his estate as a single man, it would have been easier if we’d have been married.
“It would have been lovely to have had a wedding and I still wear the engagement ring.”
It was in October 1966 when Peter and Bon decided they were a couple at a friend’s birthday party.
“For him, it just went ‘bang!’” Peter says with a chuckle.
“I was a bit more reserved, I suppose. In fact, I didn’t quite believe in long-term relationships, but it happened – and two or three months into the relationship I felt very comfortable and in love.”
Born just 20 days apart, the pair were in their late 20s when they first met.
On the night they say they first thought of themselves as a couple, two months after meeting in August 1966.
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“I was born in 1938 [in the Netherlands], just before the war, so all my younger years were during the Second World War,” Peter says. “When you turned 18, you had to do compulsory service [but] having lived during the war, that’s not what I wanted to do, be a soldier.”
His escape was a ticket to Australia in 1957.
Initially, Peter says the conservative society of his new home was a difficult adjustment.
“I was also going through discovering that I was gay, although I had known for many years already at school.”
“I knew I was different, but there was no label or name that I could give it. I just knew that women or girls, it just didn’t click with me.
“It took a long time to come to terms with that; about five years.”
During that time, he made the journey back to Europe.
“I was away for about two-and-a-half-years, and during that period, I really discovered myself.”
He travelled and worked in different countries but he remembers fondly a spring day in Sweden, where the trees were starting to bloom.
“It was almost like an apparition; ‘go back to Australia,’” he says.
He followed it, and shortly after, he met Bon.
At home in their backyard.
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“Ever since arriving, this is home,” Peter says, motioning to his house full of memories.
Portraits of the pair adorn the walls at every turn, a ceramic wedding cake sits on the mantlepiece, and in the garden a statue of David stands proudly among the greenery – a rainbow tie around his neck and a rainbow flag in hand.
A lifetime of activism
Peter and Bon helped lead the charge for equal rights for the LGBTIQ+ community.
In the early 1970s, they helped found an organisation called CAMP (Campaign Against Moral Persecution) and would go on to establish the Phone-a-Friend counselling service from their living room – offering an ear of support for anyone who needed it.
The phone line is still in existence as part of the services offered by the Twenty10 Gay and Lesbian Counselling Service NSW.
“Of course, in 1970, the biggest issue for male homosexuals was that we were criminals for sharing our bodies,” Peter says. “Bon and I living here in the house, they could have arrested us, dragged us through court, all those kinds of things.
“We had a police commissioner who said homosexuality is a cancer in society.”
Peter and Bon are proud 78ers.
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Determined to change the laws and fight for social change, the pair initially answered an invite from activist John Ware to join CAMP Ink. A large group met soon after at a wine and cheese night to start planning their activism.
“Getting a public hall in 1970 for a homosexual group was a no-no,” Peter says.
“Bon at the time was the organist and choirmaster at St John’s [Anglican Church] in Balmain.
“Of course, they have a parish hall, so Bon said to Father David at the time, ‘can we have the hall?’ and he basically said ‘About bloody time, Bonsall’. He was very affirmative.
“It was like a haven in those days that men and women could gather for a party, for a meeting, and to start the movement as we know it today.”
Peter de Waal (centre right) and Robyn Kennedy (right) celebrate 50 years of CAMP Ink.
Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras
Robyn Kennedy was also part of Camp Ink in the 1970s.
“At that stage, most LGBT organisations were very much under the radar, in the closet, because at the time homosexuality was still illegal and there were no anti-discrimination provisions,” the 67-year-old tells SBS News.
“Exposure, being outed, could lead to some pretty devastating outcomes and people quite frequently lost their jobs if they were outed, or they might have been tossed out of home, lost their family networks.
“It was a very difficult time, so organisations often operated by word of mouth.”
Robyn Kennedy at the NSW State Library Coming out in the 70s exhibition.
SBS News
Robyn remembers feeling isolated about her sexuality and “desperate to connect with likeminded people”.
“I went to Sydney University law school, which in those days was an incredibly ugly, Stalinist-type-architecture building in the city next to the law courts,” she says. “There wasn’t exactly a gay pride group in that building, so it was quite stifling.”
At 21, she knocked on the club doors of Camp Ink and to her relief, found a “safe space”.
“It was a very welcoming environment. It wasn’t really safe for lesbians to be out on the street; you’d be subject to a lot of abuse and threats of violence.”
Robyn at a women’s rights march.
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As part of her activism, Robyn travelled to schools and universities with others to educate students about the LGBTIQ+ community and equality. The group aimed to inform the next generations in the hope that the prejudice they were experiencing in the 1970s would eventually dissipate.
It was something Robyn knew all too well.
“I applied for a job that I was over-qualified for and know I wasn’t offered it because they knew I was a lesbian,” she says. “I felt really deeply hurt by that, I felt the injustice of it.
“They were the attitudes of the time … there was nothing to stop people disqualifying you on the basis of your sexuality.”
Finding fame
In 1972, Peter and Bon appeared on the ABC documentary series Chequerboard.
It was a ground-breaking episode, with the pair sharing the first kiss between a same-sex couple on national television. Ten days after it was broadcast, Bon lost his job as church secretary at a Mosman parish and had to seek a new employer – but the pair had no regrets.
They even went on to name their house after the program, and it’s where Peter still lives today.
Peter and Bon on the ABC’s Chequerboard program in 1972.
ABC
“It laid a foundation for a few different things and although the kiss was very momentary and wasn’t very intense, it in a sense broke that barrier,” Peter says.
“It’s alright for two men to be intimate at that level.”
Almost 50 years on, Peter still receives praise.
“People still refer to that moment, not only the kiss but people have come forward and have said: ‘I was 18 and I lived in Queensland and I’d never seen positive role models of two gay men.’”
Peter and Bon’s 50th anniversary at Glebe Town Hall in 2016.
Geoff Friend
In 1978, Peter and Bon, alongside Robyn and a few hundred others, marched up Sydney’s Oxford Street in its first Mardi Gras parade.
“There were lots of gay bars, so some of us would dart into the bars and say ‘out of the bars and into the streets!’” Peter says. “It was exhilarating.”
“Some did join, so the parade grew a bit, but there was no community to welcome us or say, ‘you’re alright.’”
But the night descended into violence as police began arresting the demonstrators, dragging them into waiting paddy wagons. Bon was one of them.
Peter still lives in the same house today.
SBS News
Although much has changed over the past 50 years, Peter says it is important to protect the progress that has been made.
On Saturday, he and Robyn will walk during the Mardi Gras parade at the Sydney Cricket Ground as part of the Mardi Gras 78ers, as proud pioneers of the movement.
“There’s this huge community now, all sorts of people welcoming us,” Peter says.
“That’s probably the biggest progress that my community has made … to have this ordinary acceptance.”
NSW State Library exhibition Coming out in the 70s is on until 16 May and can also be accessed online.
The 2021 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade will be broadcast live at 6pm AEDT on Saturday 6 March on SBS On Demand or catch the full parade at 7:30pm on SBS and NITV. Follow the conversation on social media with the hashtag #MardiGras2021 and visit sbs.com.au/mardigras for more stories.
LGBTIQ+ Australians seeking support with mental health can also contact QLife on 1800 184 527 or visit qlife.org.au. ReachOut.com also has a list of support services.
