Mardi Gras in Sydney

Since I arrived at the University of Sydney, I have been seeing signs everywhere for the Mardi Gras parade on March 5th, 2011. The only thing I knew about Mardi Gras before coming here was the stories I heard about New Orleans of women exposing their chests with beads draping from their necks and of drunk mobs who had started to drink at the crack of dawn. A few days before the parade I found out that unlike Mardi Gras in New Orleans, the Mardi Gras celebration in Sydney is the biggest gay and lesbian festival in the world. Having never experienced something like this before, I was really looking forward to heading to the parade. On the morning of March 5h, I was woken up by a text from my roommate, KP, telling me that in thirty minutes we would be leaving to shop for clothes to wear for the parade. When she and I got ready to go, we both admitted that we had no idea what to wear for Mardi Gras and hoped that LB, the other girl who was shopping with us would know. As we left Sydney University Village, music was blaring and no person stood without a drink in his or her hand. People were dressed in all sorts of costume, from died hair to gay pride flags to casual everyday attire. The three of us had no idea what we were getting ourselves in to, and walked in out of about eight stores in King Street empty handed. Finally we came to a funky store that sold wigs for less than twenty bucks, and after trying them on decided that we were going all out and each of us bought a pink or white wig. We then found fake eyelashes, beads and sunglasses to add, and were ready to go:

After we got dressed looking simply ridiculous and having nothing in particular to do with Mardi Gras itself, we went to an outdoor party with nearly all of the residents at the University of Sydney. We then took a bus into the city, and began to make our way to the parade. On our way through Hyde Park, which was surrounded by policemen and security guards, we saw some people dressed just as strangely as us. We saw a group of about 12 men over fifty wearing thongs and nothing else, we saw drag queens, we saw people in elaborate costumes and even a few half to completely naked individuals. Having had no idea what to expect, it was quite a shocking scene! After walking for what seemed to be miles, we finally made it to the street from which the parade ran down. There were thousands of people everywhere, and it was impossible to see what was going on. All we managed to see were men driving down on motorcycles holding gay pride flags, but failed to see anything else. After a long day in costume, we decided to turn home after only twenty minutes having been pushed and shoved by the rowdy crowd countless times. While we did not get to see the actual parade, it was still an incredible scene to see and I was happy to be able to experience such an event that is not possible to partake in in America.