Ian Johnson, Out Now
June 12, 2007
Today's 'The Australian' national daily newspaper carries a story about the passing of a Sydney lesbian and gay community icon. Dawn O'Donnell - who built Sydney's gay scene up to become one of the city's most visible nightlife and business forces, has died after a long battle with cancer. She was 79.
O'Donnell had what is sometimes euphemistically termed a 'colourful' past with long business associations with another recently deceased Sydney identity - businessman Abe Saffron.
It will be most interesting to see what stories may now be written about what ranks as probably the most dynamic and truly colourful period in Sydney's long gay history.
Dawn was a highly visible and very forceful influence on Sydney's gay community for a great many years.
Here's an extract of how The Australian reports on the passing of Dawn O'Donnell:
Mother of gay Sydney dies at 79
DAWN O'Donnell, the woman credited with turning Sydney's Oxford Street into the gay capital of the southern hemisphere, has died after a long battle with cancer.
Throughout the 1970s and 80s, Ms O'Donnell ran a string of bars, nightclubs and sex shops along Oxford street that attracted gays and lesbians from across the country and around the world.
Although little known outside the gay scene, she was accepted as the driving force in bringing gay clubs out of the shadows and into the mainstream of Sydney. Ms O'Donnell, who was approaching her 80th birthday, was still running gay pubs in Sydney's inner western suburbs up until her death yesterday from ovarian cancer.
Born in Paddington in 1928, Ms O'Donnell first made a name for herself as an ice-skater when she was a teenager. After she abandoned competition, she continued as a coach before becoming a successful butcher in the Sydney harbourside suburb of Rose Bay.
Her first venture into gay entertainment was in the late 60s when she opened Capriccio's on Oxford Street. It was followed by Jools, Ruby's, Patches, Flo's Palace and the Exchange Hotel. She also ran the Toolshed sex shops and various steam baths where the still illegal gay scene flourished.
Never keen to seek personal publicity, Ms O'Donnell was happy for her business partners, the late controversial businessman Abe Saffron and Roger Claude Teyssedre, to be caught in the public spotlight.
Teyssedre, who owned the profitable gay CBD haunt King Steam, died in April 1990 and left his considerable fortune to his lover Ludwig Gertsch - who was murdered a year later.
It was around that time that Ms O'Donnell started moving her operations from Oxford Street and Darlinghurst to the inner-west suburbs of Newtown and Erskineville, where she still owned the Imperial Hotel.
Yesterday, her longtime friend Bruce Pollack said Ms O'Donnell was as much noted for her quiet philanthropy as her commercial success.
"She was a tireless supporter of charities, both lesbian and gay and mainstream," he said.
Ms O'Donnell is survived by her partner of many years, Aniek Baten.
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