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Loading ...Gay Australia beyond Sydney
Men at the Chill Out Festival
CHILL OUT IN DAYLESFORDDaylesford, less than an hour’s drive west from the center of Melbourne, is in the middle of spa country, famous for a century for its naturally occurring mineral waters (thought to have “healing” properties, to cure whatever ails you – a hangover, perhaps?).
But what really put the town on the gay map is the annual Chillout Festival. First held in 1997, it’s now the 3rd largest GLBT celebration in the country with more than 25,000 attending each year – a nice mix of men and women.
“People come from all over Australia and increasingly from countries like the US, the UK, New Zealand and countries in Asia and Europe,” said Jim Culbertson, one of the festival’s organizers, and a U.S. businessman-turned farmer, who moved with his partner to escape the big city life.
Chillout offers what the name implies – a more toned down, gentler version of a gay pride festival. Oh, you’ll have a blast, but you probably won’t be raving until breakfast.
“The local Police have commented that it’s a great weekend. Where can you find 25,000 people having so much fun – and are so well behaved?” Culberson said.
The small town is a gay-friendly respite from the big city – it’s thought to have one of the largest per capita gay populations in the country. You can walk down Main Street holding hands with whomever you choose.
“When you’re in Daylesford you feel a million miles from the hustle and bustle and noise of city life,” Culbertson said.
Take your pick from countless B&B’s. Peppers Springs Retreat and Spa is a peaceful retreat fashioned from a 1935 art deco structure. Its Mineral Spa features treatments infused with the area’s famous waters. And it’s gay-friendly, too.
In fact, locals say a business in town that didn’t welcome GLBT guests would wither away, fast.
Daylesford is a gourmet-lovers paradise. Feast on locally sourced meals at top restaurants – try Sault, a little stone cottage on a lavender farm, with a menu of local cuisine, and enjoy fine wines from surrounding vineyards, such as Ellender Estate, offering a killer 2001 Red Nelle Cab, The area is known as the coolest grape growing region in Australia. And there are plenty of little shops to give your credit card a little exercise.
The 2009 festival theme is “Disco Stampede,” and will feature cabaret and theater, bushwalking and horseback riding.
“Rest assured Daylesford will be awash in everything from the 70’s over ChillOut weekend,” Jim said.
Next page: A hotel fit for a Queen. Really.
great articles guys, I’m from melbourne and living in London & Amsterdam now and really miss Melbourne… (btw for foriegn readers “friendly” rivalry between Melbourne and Sydney explains some of these comments) come and enjoy our great cities!
Why is Mark of Australia calling New Zealand a “colossal hole of colossal proportions?”
As an Aussie, I’m all for you guys coming over and checking out stuff beyond Sydney. Melbourne is wonderful – one of my favs – and Tassie is beautiful. But don’t forget that Sydney itself is more than Oxford St and the Mardi Gras. I live in Sydney. The fabulous hub of cosmopolitan and queer-friendly life is Newtown-Enmore-Erskineville in the inner western suburbs. It has the highest concentration of shopping (on actual streets, not malls!), live music venues, bars and clubs outside of the CBD, including gay, queer, drag queen and drag king venues. Check it out!
Echoing Tony F, Tassie decriminalised sodomy in 1997, and quickly enacted a suit of other progressive laws and policies, including a same-sex relationship register. It is also the only state in which anti-homophobia kits are required in all high schools.
But also, picking up rainbow16, the author is pretty uninformed on a range of issues. I’m a professional geographer, and I can tell you that the official population projections from the Australian Bureau of Statistics in no way indicate Melbourne surpassing Sydney anytime in the next century! Check out the stats at http://www.abs.gov.au. And, yeah, all major Australian cities have rivers (or several rivers) running through them. Sydney has the Parramatta, Georges and Lane Cove Rivers, along with others. Hmmm…
Thanks for the great article on Melbourne. Come here if you like real Aussie men without the Sydney attitude (see Mark’s comment above for a taste of that.) Don’t forget to check out the scene North of the river-Collingwood in particular–for a good type. Cheers guys. Jack.
Tasmania was the last State to decriminalize homosexuality, but when it did,the legislation was and is the most progressive in Australia. Tasmania was the first state to set up registration of civil unions before the recent legislation in the Australian Capital territory.
The Federal government of Australia has a law that restricts marriage to one man with one woman. Tasmanians are now debating a possible State same-sex marriage law.
If you like hiking, Tasmania is a wilderness paradise, with many famous national park tracks like Cradle Mountain in the centre of the island and the track to Frenchman’s Cap in the unique cool temperate rainforest of the southwest.
Gay Tasmanian Senator Bob Brown, leader of the Greens in the federal parliament, was a leader of the successful struggle to stop the damming and flooding of the wild Franklin River and much of the southwestern rainforest. He continues to lead campaigns to stop the woodchipping of other old-growth forests in Tasmania.
nice article, i used to live in Hobart but never did the interesting stuff and now i live in Sydney, so am required to inform that Melbourne is in fact a hole of colossal proportions. At least you didn’t think we all rode kangaroos or had pet koalas. You did however make a few geographical errors, crossing the Tasman will in fact take you east to New Zealand which is, you guessed it, a colossal hole of colossal proportions. Also there isn’t a Tasmanian sea. And for those of you who think Tasmania is still gay hell, one of the bigger figures in Tasmanian politics is Bob Brown who is, funnily enough, Gay.
I agree that Melbourne is a nice place – less brash and vacuous than Sydney, with lovely public spaces and a buzzing cafe culture (if you like that kind of thing, but I don’t drink coffee or tea so I find cafes a bit pointless…).
Tassie is a great place per se and I thoroughly recommend it for tourists seeking something different providing you can “blend”. As a gay-friendly destination, I’m not so sure – at least not yet. In Hobart you may find some gay people (we didn’t, though my gaydar is all screwy of late) but we found homophobia is still rife when we went outside of central Hobart. We noticed that Tasmania was generally not very switched on to two blokes travelling together. This was in March 2008.
Travellers from the US & Canada may want to note that Australia’s voltage is 240W not 110W so make sure your chargers can cope with different voltages.
Cheers from Nick in Sydney
PS – Michael, please check your spelling – Qantas does not have a “u” (it’s an acronym; see the website or Wikipedia for an explanation) and it’s “wombat” not “wambat”.
Um, almost all the capital cities in Australia (except for maybe 2-3) have rivers running through it. Tasmania is a bit of a backwater, as Rain says… the person who wrote this article seems to be a bit misinformed.
Tasmania?
Not when I lived there. How far they have come, if it is truly as this article states. When I lived there, it carried a possible custodial sentence to be a gay man, and gay women were rumoured to be raped on sight even by police… gay bashing of both genders and trans people was common, and so was deeply hateful vitriol.
This was not in the 1940’s either, this was in the 1990’s.
Good for them. I wish it had been different when I lived there, I was only able to blossom when I moved to the USA. Hardly a bastion of gay acceptance, but at least not so archaic and demonising in the big cities especially.