Sex and anarchy: The life and death of the Sydney Push

First published by Penquin Books Australia 1996

Throughout the 1950"s and `1960's the Sydney Push was a bohemian and anarchic network encompassing a huge range of people from the professions and arts. To belong, you needed an inquiring mind, an adventurous spirit and a preparedness to sped hours leaning on the bar at the current Push pub. Adits centre were the Sydney Libertarians, who liked the races, a game of cards and plenty of parties just as much as they loved a good argument on the merits of Freud an dReich. The men and women of the Push were opposed to the State, the Church, the wowsers of the Menzies era, and censorship; and they lived out the sexual revolution a good fifteen years before it hit the rest of society.

'If ever, anyone, I desired a good report, I desired it of them, my guides, philosophers and friends, The Sydney Libertarians.'

Germaine Greer

'I certainly heard the basic message of Sydney Libertarianism loud and clear - that you should never believe anything someone says merely because he or she is saying it.'

Robert Huges

'Really, they were romantics.'

Frank Moorhouse