Transcript
As spoken by Claire

This transcript is drawn from an audio recording. It has been lightly edited for clarity and readability while preserving the participant’s original voice and meaning.
 

We are in my apartment in North Sydney, which I love. I describe it as my queer sanctuary. It's just such a great space, and I take a lot of pride in my space.​ I work in North Sydney, so I can literally walk to work in 10–15 minutes. So yeah, the location is a beautiful place to go for walks. I love the harbour. Being so close to the harbour, I can get down there in 20 minutes. And then there's beautiful nature walks in this area too.

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I am really passionate about raising awareness for this community, and a lot of that is at work through LinkedIn, on my Instagram, and I post company-wide articles on our Teams channel on the special rainbow days.​ So we've just had Lesbian Visibility Week and Lesbian Visibility Day. I, you know, raised a post on that. I'll do it for, you know, trans awareness, all the different days, IDAHOBIT, everything. I just want to get it out there, educate people.

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I do it because I know how much being an ally, like someone showing their allyship to this community, is. So I just want to show my support to the community. And there's so, so much within the community. Like, we all need to be allies with how everyone in this community identifies.

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What it's like being queer for me? I'm very comfortable with who I am. When I joined CHU, where I work now, which has been nearly 15 years, I was married at the time. And, you know, I had a photo of my wife and I on my computer from day one. I didn't hide that, and I felt very accepted.

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I haven't experienced anything negative from being out at work since day dot. I feel very fortunate that I am in that space because I know that it's so hard for so many of us. And so I do feel fortunate and lucky and very grateful that I have lived my whole adult life out.​ I came out when I was 18, so I've just continued to get more comfortable with myself and more confident to just be out, because this is who I am, and that's your problem if you're not okay with it.

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A really good memory from living in this area was in 2023, which was when WorldPride was in Sydney. And that time, I mean, I love Mardi Gras season. It's my favourite time of the year. But that year, having WorldPride was just... it was just epic. It was just electric. Everything was just amazing.

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And so the March Over the Bridge started in North Sydney. I participated in that. I've still got the little wristband from it as a keepsake. But having that event start in North Sydney, I mean, and walking over the bridge, I'd never done that kind of walk before, so that was amazing to do that.

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The other really special thing for me was, to kick off the start of WorldPride, they lit up the Opera House in rainbow, in the Progress Pride flag actually. And seeing that from Kirribilli was really beautiful.

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