Rainbow Crusaders

4 Aug 2015

Val’s Coffee Lounge

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123 Swanston Street in Melbourne CBD. A tiny door leads up a rickety flight of steps. Nowadays to a Hare Krishna restaurant. Across the road the Melbourne Town Hall looms overhead.

In the 1950s, if you walked up the rickety flights of stairs, you’d enter another place entirely. A dimly lit lighted narrow room filled with mauve chairs, and muralled wall and filled by the crème of Melbourne’s bohemian and camp crowd. A time when homosexuality was still considered perverse activity, the Vice Squad was raiding private parties and anti-Communist sentiment was rife.

Here though there was nothing but fabulous people, the fresh aroma of threepence coffee and a glamorous blonde woman dressed in an exquisite suit walked along the azure carpet and made sure her clientele where made to feel safe in a time of isolation.

This opportunistic and by her own admission outrageous character, leapt on an chance to make a safe haven for her fellow camps and in doing so developed a wonderful culture where same sex attracted and gender diverse individuals could be themselves without oppression.

That woman was Val Eastwood, the first to be profiled by Patrick in our series, Rainbow Crusaders.