Transcript
As spoken by Kimberly O'Sullivan

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.

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North Sydney was like another country. Amazing. Crossing that bridge, it was like going into another world.

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The reason I was in the North Sydney area was only because of lesbian activities, and those lesbian activities were socially down at Balls Head Reserve, which was an unofficial dyke picnic place. So when we wanted to go further afield than Centennial Park, we'd go across the bridge in a convoy of cars and go to Balls Head Reserve, which is really beautiful with an amazing view of the harbour and the bridge. And so we would arrive in carloads, lesbians and dogs always together at that time, and we would take over Balls Head Reserve.

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But totally separate to that, I met a woman who was a friend of a friend, and I met her when I was living at Leichhardt, so in Dykehardt, in the heart of the ghetto. And she was a married woman from Balmain, but she was obviously a dyke, very unhappy, and had been desperate to leave her marriage for ages. We fell in love and started this really passionate affair.

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She was originally from Turramurra, so she was a North Shore gal, and when she left her husband, she rented an apartment at 4 Blue Street, North Sydney. It was nine months, and I always think it was like a gestation period. So it just started in this passion and being madly in love. It was very sexual, very romantic, very intense, and then it just burnt itself out.

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By nine months, it was just falling apart, and we went our separate ways. But it remained a really important relationship to me. Even though when we left, I remember, you know, "Okay, this is it, and we're not going to see each other anymore," and I remember sitting in her lounge room in the apartment, and we both just cried and cried and cried, because we knew it was over. But we were both like, "We're really glad this happened."

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And she did say to me, "Of all the women I've fallen in love with during my marriage, you were the one I left my husband for," and she'd been married for over 20 years.

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So when I met Robin, I was a very out and proud dyke living in the inner city, really politically involved with campaigning. So meeting another woman, and I'd finished one relationship and she was another relationship that I was involved with, just felt really natural to me. It was a big thing to her because she was leaving her marriage. It was a big thing to be out because she'd been closeted in her marriage for so long.

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And of course, living in the inner city, it was just booming. We were really young. We were really gutsy. We were going to change the world. We felt really confident. We were really out and proud. And so we never hid anything anywhere, from dyke social events to dyke sporting stuff, to political meetings, to dyke hotels and bars. I wouldn't have thought twice about having a big passionate kiss with a girlfriend in the street.

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Honestly, over the bridge, over the harbour, it was a whole other world. I remember thinking it was very white, very Anglo, very straight, and very conservative. And I remember she would never hold my hand when we were here. And in talking to her about that, she'd say, "No, you just can't do that. You can't do that."

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So we'd walk along like we were friends, and if people met us or we had to interact, it was like, "Oh, this is my friend. Yes, this is my friend." And you couldn't hold hands. You couldn't cuddle or anything like that.

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I remember we were down at the end of Blues Point Road, and there's a little park down there, and I remember a very distinct thought there, looking across the harbour and going, "There are no lesbians north of the harbour. It is just us. It is just us on this island north of the harbour."

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But she was very wedded to it. She did work here. She worked at Chatswood. She was a graphic designer, a very good graphic designer, actually really talented. And she very much wanted to stay north of the harbour.

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During the week, she would write me love letters in beautifully decorated envelopes, and luckily I've kept them. She would do bits of calligraphy for me, and they would just arrive in the mail, and they were just extraordinary, really beautiful, all hand done in pen.

I haven't stood in this street for 42 years. So I got off and I walked up the hill. Of course, it's a surprise to see that 4 Blue Street, North Sydney isn't there. You can get on Google Street View and see it. And just looking at that, I remember the front of the building. It was called Conway Court.

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It's interesting for me, North Sydney, or even that North Sydney local government area, or north of the harbour, is very much the love affair with Robin, and that's what that time was about, and nothing since has brought me north of the harbour. It's really important to me to hang onto those memories because they're part of what made me me.

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At the end of that nine months, it was 1984, the year we were together, I never saw her again. Occasionally, I would ask friends of friends of friends who I thought knew her about her. I heard that she moved to the Blue Mountains, then I heard she'd gone to live in Victoria, and then I heard that she'd died. And I remember being really shocked that she'd died.

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I found her headstone in a cemetery in Victoria, and I really had my heart in my throat this week looking at a picture of the headstone with her name. It had her birthday in February, and I thought, "Yeah, that's right. She was an Aquarian." I remember when it was her birthday, and there she was, and she'd passed away.

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And because there was 11 years difference between us, I was 28, she was 39 when we were together. Eleven years since she died, she died in 2015, I'm actually the same age that she was when she died. So there seems like a beautiful symmetry to have the opportunity to be here talking about her and looking over there and going, "Robin, I remember you.It was a wild time." I really loved her. I know she really loved me, and it's really special to be able to remember our story.

 

I would like to say to her, even though it all ended in tears, it was an amazing time we had together. I really deeply loved her. I know she really deeply loved me. I'm so glad that our paths crossed for this really deep, intense time in our lives, and thank you for being there.