Hate crime inspires new oratorio

The 50th anniversary of the drowning of Dr Duncan will be commemorated in a new composition at this year’s Adelaide Festival.

‘Poofter-bashing’ was the ugly name given to a dreadful sport practiced across Australia throughout the 1970s, 1980s and beyond.

In the state of NSW alone in that time, baying packs of violent young homophobes murdered up to 88 men, their victims’ deaths now memorialised by the artwork Rise in Tamarama’s Marks Park.

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Richard Watts OAM is ArtsHub's National Performing Arts Editor; he also presents the weekly program SmartArts on Three Triple R FM. Richard is a life member of the Melbourne Queer Film Festival, a Melbourne Fringe Festival Living Legend, and was awarded the Sidney Myer Performing Arts Awards' Facilitator's Prize in 2020. In 2021 he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Green Room Awards Association. Most recently, Richard received a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in June 2024. Follow him on Twitter: @richardthewatts