Peter McEwan, 69
Board Member of the Victorian Pride Centre
Queer male, Gay
He/him
17-year-old Peter was riding his bicycle home after school on a spring afternoon in 1967 when he decided to wander down to Brighton beach, where the bathing boxes are. Peter had been to the same spot numerous times before to meet with other men, unknown strangers, in the thick of the bushes
“I had no idea what gay was then. I just knew I got excited to be around other men and I just wanted to be touched by them and to touch them,” Peter explains.
Just as Peter approached another young man, the bushes parted and undercover cops jumped onto the scene and arrested them, dragging them across the beachfront in front of other beachside goers and taken to the Brighton Police Station where he was charged.
“They wrote out a confession and I signed it. Then they called my father who had to come bail me out, and that was one of the worst things… he was just furious. We had to go and collect my bicycle and I remember coming home and as we drove up to the front of the house, there in the front window of the lounge room were all my brothers and sisters lined up between the curtains… just this row of faces looking because they knew something terrible had happened,” Peter remembers of that fateful day.
In the months following, Peter had to endure court appearances, psychiatric assessments and having his name published on the front pages of the newspaper, among other things. But the experience eventually propelled Peter to be involved in the early Gay Liberation Movement in Melbourne during the early 70s.
Photo notes:
On an overcast winter morning, Peter took me back to the spot at Brighton Beach, a stone’s throw away from the beach boxes, where he was arrested. Fifty-two years on, the memory remains etched in Peter’s mind, pointing out personal landmarks as we walk through native bushes to a clearing overlooking the city in the distance.