(Un)speakable pasts: reflections on working at the edges of queer oral history

This chapter explores the challenges, and the surprising possibilities, of working at the edges of queer history with narrators whose stories intersect with the history of the queer community but who have diverse relationships to and understandings of queer life. The chapter considers the stories of two narrators, Sarah a straight woman and John a gay man, both Australian nurses who worked with HIV and AIDS patients in the 1980s and 1990s but who each recalled the queer life of a small rural Australian town in very different ways. Whilst Sarah was reticent when it came to discussing (homo)sexuality in her home town, John shared vivid recollections of his own sexual history in the same locale. Placed side by side, they provide a glimpse into the nuances of the queer past in a small town; lives lived in shadows, secrets and shame but also joyful, defiant, and open lives.