When researching the infamous 1994 police raid of the Melbourne club Tasty, one of the first things you’ll notice is the lack of photographs. These days, if about 50 cops burst into a gay club and strip-searched and detained 463 law-abiding citizens, it would probably be live-streamed. But 30 years later only one grainy photo remains: some men with their backs to us, hands up against a wall, a police officer caught in profile at the edge of the frame. It’s an almost benign image that belies what happened that night.
Gerard O’Connor, who managed Tasty and was present for most of the raid, explains why photos were scarce: “Tasty was such a private club, we weren’t into showing off for the cameras.”
Gavin Campbell, Tasty’s co-founder and its resident DJ, adds: “We were conscious not to take photos, because not everyone was out.”
LGBTQI+ culture was more concealed, less confident and more vulnerable in 1994 than now. Homosexuality was decriminalised but many civil rights were still years off: gay people couldn’t marry, adopt children or inherit a partner’s assets. If there was a nascent sense of social legitimacy, the Victorian police’s aggressively homophobic raid tapped directly into barely dormant feelings of inadequacy and shame.
One patron, Simon, was there that night. “I wasn’t even out to my family. I was petrified. For me as a gay man of 20, there weren’t many spaces I felt comfortable in. Tasty was a really important space. It was exciting.”
O’Connor remembers Tasty’s earliest iterations as an alternative club – the most desirable in Melbourne. “You didn’t necessarily go looking for gays but you found them there. As it got darker and dirtier, you’d meet people of kind. There was this cool influx of young kids who were just aching to dress up and go partying.”
Campbell smiles at the memory of those initial heady days: “It just went through the roof. We were the hottest club in town.”
Tasty’s success was due to its atmosphere as much as the music, an edge of licentiousness and a kind of tenebrous glamour. Key to this was the “grope maze”, an entire floor in the club’s basement dedicated to sex on premises. “These days people go to more effort to provide sex-on-site premises,” O’Connor says. “We just gave them pornos, condoms and lube, turned the lights off and chucked in a couple of tea-towels. And everyone went for it.”
The grope maze drew the crowds but also eventually the police. While there had been a broader campaign to clamp down on drugs in nightclubs, the Tasty raid was different: clearly fuelled by a moral righteousness from police over consensual sex between gay men. It was dubbed Operation Maze.
“It felt like a war, a war between gay and straight,” Simon says. “The police picked that club because it was high-level gay activity. They knew it was our place, they knew it was where we went and expressed ourselves.”
The club had been receiving tips that a raid was in the works for weeks – anonymous phone calls, presumably from “gay men who were cops or the partners of cops”, says Campbell. “And then one Saturday, there were about a dozen calls from desperate gay men saying it’s on.”
What they didn’t expect was the scope and violence of the attack; it would go on to rupture relations between Victoria police and the LGBTQI+ community for years.
“It was quick,” Simon recalls. “Bang, all the lights came on. You were standing in a smoke-filled room in the middle of a dancefloor and all of a sudden there were dogs running around and armed officers yelling at you. I just remember the anger they had towards us.”
Campbell says: “We were in shock, we were numb. We couldn’t understand why it was so visceral.” The police strip-searched every person in the club, in full view of other patrons. “No screens, no privacy,” he adds. “Torches, fingers. They had about 45 pairs of gloves, and they digitally inspected that many people. We’re talking about the Aids era.” It has been 30 years but the bitterness in his voice remains undimmed.
“I don’t know what they expected to find,” Simon says. “If you’ve got sniffer dogs, you don’t need to strip-search people.” Certainly, the “haul” of drugs found during the raid was desultory at best – “a bottle of amyl. An empty bag of speed”, O’Connor says.
The police eventually apologised in 2014, days before the 20-year anniversary, and settled a class action lawsuit totalling $6m.
Victoria police’s LGBTQIA+ communities portfolio manager, Jeremy Oliver, says Tasty was “probably the biggest catalyst for change” in the organisation. After the raid, Victoria police set up the priority and safer communities division, and instigated a review of internal practices – via the Victorian Equal Opportunity Human Rights Commission report – which “shone a light on workplace harm experienced by rainbow employees, and essentially started this huge cultural shift,” Oliver says. Now many police officers are proudly and openly queer, including the deputy commissioner, Neil Paterson.
Campbell lost his club – it closed five weeks later. While the raid gave Tasty an air of notoriety, it also spooked people and “absolutely nobody came”. But his legacy in the queer community is sacrosanct. And for the 30th anniversary of the raid, Tasty is being reclaimed in a celebration, bringing the old gang back – including the original resident DJs Peter McNamara and Arlen de Silva – to take over Inflation. Even the infamous grope maze will return.
And now, fully cognisant of the power of the image, photos are encouraged. O’Connor has established the look of the night with a series of promotional photos tapping directly into the spirit of reclamation, a kind of camp reimagining of the raid itself, refracted through the fetishisation and prurience of 90s pop culture: “You forget that the 90s is back in fashion. There’s the fetish, the leather gear, the music. It’s funny how cyclical culture is.”
Partying in the face of oppression has always been something at which the queer community excels. “Where did Mardi Gras come from?” O’Connor asks. “Where did Stonewall come from? You don’t have to sit in misery about it 30 years later. Take the pants off and reclaim it.”
Tasty Raid 30th Anniversary will be held at Inflation on Saturday 10 August
