That is a question best answered by the ordinary people who called Darlinghurst home in the '70s, '80s, and '90s. In a revelatory new podcast by Macquarie University historian Leigh Boucher, the Sydney suburb's nurses, frontline workers, party boys and girls lay bare the shocking realities of "the best and worst" time of their lives.
History Lab: Darlinghurst's AIDS Crisis functions as an auditory time capsule, transporting listeners into the gyms, parks, cafés and clubs of Sydney's inner-east, exactly as they were 50 years ago.
"I live in Darlinghurst, the centre of LGBTQIA+ life in Sydney and Australia," Boucher tells Lighthouse. "I had a sense of the HIV/AIDS catastrophe. Incredible numbers of people getting sick. Inspiring community activism. Heartbreaking grief and loss. But I didn't know what it was like to live through that within a neighbourhood. I'd never heard that story told."
Boucher painstakingly conducted 20 in-depth interviews with Darlinghurst residents, many of whom have never previously shared their experiences.
(L-R): Best friends Peter Vincent and Pierra Touma lived in Darlinghurst throughout the AIDS crisis. Photo: Supplied.
He began by interviewing people whose voices had not been recorded in Oral History Archives, including healthcare workers, volunteers from ACON, and individuals who were simply forging a life in the 'gaybourhood' in the 1980s and 1990s.
Sydney Star Observer cover star and City Gym manager Peter Vincent passed away on World AIDS Day in December 1991. He was a beloved Darlinghurst fixture, whose two-line obituary and name on an AIDS Memorial Quilt panel, left Boucher with more questions than answers.
The historian tracked down Peter's friends, lovers, and family to piece together a heartfelt portrait of his life. "In telling me about him, they naturally told me a lot about Darlinghurst as well," he says.
"Their stories took me to a Darlinghurst life I recognised, where connection and joy were made at the Midnight Shift (now Universal) and gay hotspot City Gym."
Peter Vincent. Photo: Supplied.
What Boucher uncovered was a treasure trove of "surprising, confounding, and paradoxical" truths that are lost to the mainstream narrative of Australia's "heroic" HIV response.
"The history of Sydney's HIV/AIDS crisis is often told as a national success story because transmission rates were much lower here than elsewhere in the world," Boucher explains.
"That story is told by activists, health leaders, politicians, and high-profile figures."
This new hyper-local history offers fresh insight into how Darlinghurst's queer subcultures responded to one of the deadliest epidemics of modern times, working out, living, and loving as AIDS spread through their world.
The AIDS Memorial Quilt panel dedicated to Peter Vincent. Photo: Supplied.
"I discovered a whole set of subterranean practices from when people were trying to figure out how to treat HIV on their own," Boucher says.
"I learned that the years leading up to the crisis, in the late '80s, were also the peak years of queer activity, dance parties, and agency in the neighbourhood. Many people told me, 'This was the best time of my life', which is a real contradiction."
Boucher also learned the historical narrative of community resilience that we use to talk about AIDS "really conceals how difficult things got when death rates got really high."
In 1994, LGBTQ+ magazine Sydney Star Observer was printing up to 25 obituaries per week.
"People talk about going to a café and opening the paper to figure out who's died," Boucher says. "Many people I spoke to buried half of their friendship group. People started to get exhausted, and because the experience was so concentrated in Darlinghurst, there was no escape. You couldn't get away from it. It became too much."
The Sydney Star Observer was first published in July 1979, serving as a directory for gay-friendly businesses during a time when homosexual acts were criminalised in New South Wales.
When combination treatments for HIV arrived in '96, it meant AIDs was no longer a terminal condition, but a chronic one. Everything changed.
"From many, there is a real turning away," Boucher says. "The feeling is: 'Actually we just need to move on. We can't talk about this anymore'.
"There are lots of metaphors that people use to describe this collective trauma response," Boucher says.
'Closing the chapter', 'walking away', and 'shutting the door' are the big ones.
Green Park Rotunda, pictured with the AIDS Memorial Quilt, is a 'pulse point' of queer history in Darlinghurst. Photos: Supplied.
"It's in that space that the 'hero' Australian response narrative emerges about how strong and united we were. But when you drill down into people's individual experiences, that's not how things worked," Boucher says.
"There was a real reluctance to speak about the experience honestly and fully for quite some time, so what we're left with is an uneven sense of the realities.
"If everyone wanted to 'shut the door' in '96, I see this podcast as giving people a way to look inside the room. I was very lucky that I had so many people willing to open the door for me."
The following stories are short excerpts from the interviews in History Lab: Darlinghurst's AIDS Crisis , which you can listen to in full on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Pierre Touma, close friend of Peter Vincent
"As a Lebanese gay guy, it was unheard of to come out. I worked in the bars at night and trainer by day at City Gym. It was a wonderful time. Darlinghurst back then, the Golden Mile, it was hustling. You couldn't move on Oxford Street. That's how busy it was."
Pierre Touma (pictured) and Peter Vincent bonded over their mutual love of body-building. Photo: Supplied.
1981: "I said there's something going on in America man. You have sex with somebody and then you die a year later. No one believed me. It came to Sydney a year later."
"In a sincere way, we became so good at funerals. People would talk about 'this one had a good funeral, the other one had a bigger funeral. There was a lot of sadness. A lot of paranoia.
"When I think of Pete, I think of the parties, good times, of the cheekiness that he had. Something in me is missing from him not being there. I will never forget him. You lost a lot."
Lizzie Griggs, found herself immersed in the queer world of Darlinghurst at 17. When the crisis hit, she pioneered the 'AIDS bus': an outreach service that operated from the Albion Centre.
Lizzie Griggs pictured on the Mardi Gras 'AIDS Bus' float in the mid-1980s. Photo: Supplied.
"We moved the service from Albion Street to Kirketon Road in 1990 because it was a much better match. Let me tell you, Albion Street was really for gay middle-class men. Our gorgeous, street-based, chaotic clients [often IV drug users and sex workers] did not mix well. They didn't make appointments. There was a clash of cultures.
"People were getting increasingly skeletal. They couldn't socialise properly because of the different infections, like cryptosporidium (a parasitic disease that causes shocking diarrhea). I had a friend that literally would have to go bar to bar up Oxford St and s*** his way up to be able to get from A to B.
"We all crossed paths and all worked together. It was all very intersected. It became your whole world. We all mourned together. We all went to the funerals together. Everyone read the Star Observer every day for the names of all these people who died. Then we'd all get together at the vigils. I didn't think I would ever experience anything like that. I was so lucky… I know that's a weird thing to say.
"There was an incredible coming together of different people from all different walks of life. Socio-economic status, gay, straight, whatever, it didn't matter. My friends and I say it was like a war. It must be similar to the camaraderie between war veterans."
Gary Dunn moved from Adelaide to Darlinghurst andstarted working as a writer for the Sydney Star Observer in the mid 1980s.
(L-R): Leigh Boucher and Gary Dunn pictured at the launch event for History Lab: Darlinghurst's AIDS Crisis in February 2026. Photo: Supplied.
"The one thing that editors had to do was make sure everything they published about HIV was double checked and accurate. Because the Sydney Morning Herald wasn't doing that, the Daily Telegraph wasn't, and the Australian certainly wasn't. There was a real responsibility to get it right because people made decisions about what was okay [regarding safe sex and transmission] based on us."
Bruce Carter grew up in working-class Balmain, Sydney. He started hanging out in 'Darlo' aged 15 and later became a nurse.
Late 1980s: "On a Friday night, I was off duty. We'd say, 'It's been really heavy. I'd seen this many people die. I saw this young queen slashed up in front of me…' but it's been a s*** of a week, let's have a party."
Ian Innes, moved to Darlinghurst with his HIV positive partner in the early 1990s.
"Some friends of mine, who are like gay uncles, still have a place in Fitzroy Street in Surry Hills — just around the corner from Albion Street and part of Bourke Street. I remember in '92, we walked up part of Bourke Street and they knew somebody in every single house that had died. Or both partners had died. The people that were left just couldn't cope with that.
"Some people got sick and died quickly, but others went through multiple illnesses and were sick for 2-3 years. There was a long-term impact on the surviving partner, who would then be left to deal with the mess. I think a lot of them packed up and moved."
