Pride Memories: Not in Kansas anymore

Western Australia’s LGBTIQ community organisation Pride WA is celebrating their 25th anniversary.

The ‘Silver City’ themed PrideFEST began last night and there’s a stack of event running over the next sixteen days. The highlight will be the Pride Parade through the streets of Northbridge in a week’s time.

We asked a bunch of people for their favourite Pride memory. This one is from the Open Arms Fellowship’s Graham Douglas-Meyer.

My most exciting memory of Pride was in 1994. It was my first Pride ever. I had come out only a couple of months before. I was the only openly gay student at Notre Dame University in Fremantle. Fairday at Perry Lakes was so much fun and my first experience of being able to be myself. It was all capped off with the Pride Parade that I helped to marshal. I met people that I hadn’t met since high school; one of them a 7 foot Snow White. It was the first time in my 31 years on this planet that I felt I could be honest about myself, I felt I belonged and I wasn’t in Kansas anymore!

Have you got a favourite memory of the Pride Festival’s 25 year history? Share it with us at [email protected] 

OIP Staff