Latest Style Blog: Festivals: The Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras
The Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras, founded in 1978, is an annual LGBT pride parade and festival held in Sydney, Australia, from mid-February to first week of March. Attended by hundreds of thousands of people around Australia and overseas, it is one of the largest such festivals in the world and the largest Pride event in Oceania. It includes events such as the Sydney Mardi Gras Parade and Party, Bondi Beach Drag Races, Harbor Party and academic discussion panel ‘Queer Thinking’, and attracts around 70,000 people to Victoria Park, Sydney. This event is also one of Australia’s biggest tourist attractions with dancing, music, and parades being the main crowd-pullers. It is New South Wales’ second largest annual event in terms of economic impact, generating an annual income of about A$30 million for the state. Numerous participants were arrested by New South Wales Police in the initial years when the event began, so this event maintains a political flavor, with many marching groups promoting LGBTQI rights issues.