Queer history-maker Kate Rowe's proudest and darkest moments feature in her debut memoir

Australia Broadcast Center

11-07-2025

In 1978, a year after acknowledging to herself she was a lesbian, 26-year-old Kate Rowe was ready to come out publicly in Sydney's first-ever Mardi Gras parade.
"It was the first time I'd said to myself, 'Up the lezzos,' which is what I was chanting," Kate says.
"I felt good about it … It was a celebration rather than an excuse to flagellate myself."
But what was supposed to be a party ended in violence, when police began to assault and arrest Mardi Gras participants.
"I remember when we got to the end of Oxford Street and the [float] stopped. I was sitting on the bonnet of the truck and [Mardi Gras organiser] Ken Davis said to me, 'Get down because they'll get you,'" Kate says.
"I was so naive politically, so naive, and I didn't understand what he meant."
Caught in the ensuing riot, Kate says she was hit over the head with the lid of a rubbish bin and fell to the ground. She was then pushed and pulled between police and the crowd.
Kate was thrown into a paddy wagon and taken to Darlinghurst Police Station where she was one of 53 people arrested that night.
She was locked in a cell with 23 other women. That night, Kate says, she could hear fellow marcher Peter Murphy being brutally bashed in a neighbouring cell.
"I'll never forget that … I've never forgiven that," she says.
Forty-seven years later, this is just one of many astonishing life experiences Kate details in her debut memoir, How the F*ck Would I Know?
In it, she also describes surviving sexual assault, marrying a dying gay man and competing in ten gruelling Ironman events.
"In essence [the memoir] is about how I've survived and grown through the sometimes-awful experiences that I've had," she says.
"I've kept this stuff in me for so long."
Growing up in the UK, Kate was sexually abused by the father of a toddler she babysat. The abuse began when she was 11.
After fleeing to Australia from England in 1971, she eventually settled in Sydney. There she experienced abuse again when, at age 37, she was violently raped by an unknown male intruder in her inner-west home.
For years, Kate only told the police and her counsellor, but decided to write about the assaults because she thought "maybe this might help someone".
It also helped her. "Every time I had to go back and edit, it was difficult … but it was like this enormous letting go."
Kate, who also writes about her decades-long battle with drug and alcohol addiction, credits her ability to speak openly about traumatic events to recovery programs and therapy she has attended since the 70s.
They have encouraged her to "own up to your demons".
"I had to learn to be honest and deal with it so that [the past events] weren't ruling my life anymore," she says.
There were other changes in Kate's life during this period.
At a time when being gay was highly stigmatised, Kate overcame her internalised homophobia and accepted that she was attracted to women.
"When I was at high school I got bashed in the toilet because I was being told I was a lesbian," Kate says.
"I didn't even know what a lesbian was."
In her 20s, the penny dropped when a friend asked Kate why she surrounded herself with women.
"I realised that that's what I was doing."
Her experience of violence at Mardi Gras was a political awakening that ignited a passion for LGBT and women's rights.
"I went to a Fred Nile anti-abortion rally and I got arrested there," Kate says.
After refusing to pay a $75 fine, Kate was sent to Silverwater Women's Correctional Centre, a maximum-security prison for serious offenders, for four days.
"I entered a world that I never want to go back to. It really opened my eyes," Kate says.
By the 90s, and now in her 40s, Kate's life again took a turn.
"I just realised that I had to stop asking, 'Why me?'," she says. It was a question that, for Kate, had no useful answer.
She started to feel a growing sense of optimism about her future.
"I thought, one day my life is going to be OK. One day I'm not going to have all these dramas," she says.
She started a media degree and found a cheap flat to rent in the Sydney suburb of Leichhardt. It was there she met Ray, a gay man who lived next door.
"I knew he was a raging alcoholic the day I met him," Kate says.
"I told him that I was an alcoholic, but I didn't drink anymore. We just hit it off."
Some years later, after each had moved into their own home, Ray asked to see Kate.
"I knew he had cirrhosis of the liver because he was as yellow as anything. And he told me he was sick and that if he didn't stop drinking, he'd be dead in a month.
"In those days, superannuation was very discriminatory. You had to be married to pass on your super … otherwise it would go to the state. And he literally said, 'I'm f***ed if I'm going to let that happen. Marry me,'" Kate recalls.
"It literally came out of the blue. He had all his drinking buddies. I still don't know why he chose me."
At an engagement dinner, Ray told Kate that he was HIV-positive. His partner had died of AIDS years earlier.
"I always said to him, 'Whatever happens, I'll be there for you,'" Kate says.
"We had joint bank accounts and then we went to marriage-guidance counselling.
"It was really funny because we had to act as though we were heterosexual."
Kate and Ray married in 1994. Ray died in 1997.
After his death, Kate was financially secure for the first time in her life and, thanks to Ray, was able to get a house mortgage.
"I will be forever grateful," she says.
After distancing herself from pubs, Kate's social life took a hit, so she turned to sport instead.
"It was a way for me to try and stay grounded," she says. "If I could feel physically strong, then maybe the emotional strength would come eventually."
"It was a way of realising how precious life was and that I've got one body and I need to look after [it]."
Kate went on to compete in 10 international Ironman events.
She also competed in the Gay Games and volunteered on the organising committee for more than 20 years.
"I spent so much of my time living a really unhealthy life," she says, "I had a choice to change that."
Sport is now an integral part of her life.
"I've been doing [it] for so long, I don't know how not to do it."
Kate has decided to launch her book at Sydney's LGBTQIA+ history museum, Qtopia, which is based at the former Darlinghurst Police Station where she was locked up almost five decades ago.
"Every time I go in there, it still brings that emotion up," she says.
"It was time for me to make peace with myself and to accept what happened and that good can come out of it."
Clean and sober for 48 years, Kate says writing her memoir has been the ultimate catharsis.
"I just felt so much lighter," she says.
"I'm a damaged unit in some ways. But all of that stuff, it's found its place in me. It doesn't define me anymore."
How the F*ck Would I Know — A Memoir by Kate Rowe is out now.