• Cambridge Scholars Publishing

    "[Engaging Art: Essays and Interviews from Around the Globe is a] collection of astonishing scope, Roslyn Bernstein delves into archives, exhibits, the built environment, and the lively characters who create them. She keenly engages the creativity that enriches, probes, and inspires the world."

    - Alisa Solomon, Columbia University, USA

Kamp Melbourne in the 1920s and '30s: Trade, Queans and Inverts

Melbourne in the 1920s and ’30s had a reputation as a staid and provincial city, a respectable, Sabbath-observing town, a metropolis of quiet suburban lives. There were, however, those who did not conform to society’s rules; among them homosexual men. The members of this hidden and persecuted group formed a subculture of friendship groups, meeting places, secret signs and words which allowed them to live their lives against a backdrop of legal, social, and moral restrictions. This book is an investigation of this subculture and those men who lived within it.


Wayne Murdoch lives and breathes Australian social history. He became involved with the Australian Lesbian and Gay Archives after moving to Melbourne for postgraduate study in the 1980s, which fostered his interest in the homosexual history of his adopted city.

"Murdoch has produced a very readable and richly illustrated book, although some might be uncomfortable with the use of actual names and photographs given the legal context. Kamp Melbourne is a thoughtfully structured and accessible text and a useful ready reference for teaching and research. More than the sum of its parts, it provides an evocative and sensitive account of queer life in one of Australia’s most dynamic cities and draws our attention to the fullness of kamp life at a crucial period of identity formation."

Yorick Smaal, Griffith University Australian Historical Studies 49 (2018)

Buy This Book

ISBN: 1-4438-7904-5

ISBN13: 978-1-4438-7904-0

Release Date: 23rd August 2017

Pages: 240

Price: £61.99

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