Australian activist Ron Austin was born in 1929 and died on this day in 2019. Born in Maitland, New South Wales to a working class Roman Catholic family, he identified as gay from childhood. After leaving school at 16, he entered a monastery with the intention of becoming a priest, but left after four years. He enrolled in art school in Newcastle, before moving to Sydney where he studied at the National Art School, and worked in an after-school care centre for teenagers in Erskineville. In 1971, he became a founding member of the Campaign Against Moral Prosecution (CAMP), a gay rights group who worked to overturn laws prohibiting homosexuality. Austin became heavily involved in CAMP’s telephone counselling service (Phone-a-Friend), and presented CAMP’s formal submission to the 1974 Royal Commission on Human Relationships. In 1978, he helped organise Sydney’s first gay film festival. Inspired by a documentary film about the San Francisco Freedom Day Parade, he conceived of a similar event for Sydney’s gay community. The first Mardi Gras March was held in June 1978, timed to commemorate the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, combining a street party with protests calling for law reform and an end to police harassment of gay and lesbian people. Attended by over 2,000 people, the parade was eventually broken up by police, and 53 people were arrested. While most charges were dropped, the Sydney Morning Herald published the names, addresses and occupations of those arrested, leading to many of them losing their jobs and homes. The resulting publicity prompted a series of protests, leading to law change preventing police from making arrests during peaceful demonstrations. Austin remained a prominent figure in CAMP, advocating for the decriminalisation of homosexuality (achieved in 1984) and legal recognition of same-sex relationships, and marching in the Mardi Gras parade every year. Austin lived to see the Sydney Mardi Gras become one of the world’s biggest LGBTQ events. In 2014, the Lord Mayor of Sydney hosted a reception in Austin’s honour, hailing him as the Godfather of Mardi Gras. Austin died in 2019, aged 90. The Ron Austin Award for the most fabulous float in the Mardi Gras Parade is given annually in his honour.