How it began, in the words of Annie South

The late 1990s

"It all started with Christopher Lefler, a Canadian who had rowed at university elite level. He was politically sophisticated and a very strong advocate for gay and women's rights. He was the initial driving force to form the club. In the late 1990's he placed an ad in Melbourne Star Observer looking for gay men who wanted to row. Several people responded and they started rowing at La Trobe University that lent them a boat."

Addressing the Gay Games myth

"There was a myth that the club was founded for the Sydney Gay Games - that's not the case. What happened was that Christopher was coaching his crew at La Trobe, and they reached the point where they wanted to be a gay club. There were only three or four queer rowing clubs in the world at the time such as DC Strokes in Washington and, I think, London Blades."

The Midsumma stall (2001), where Annie first saw them

"What happened next was that they borrowed a boat – a four, and a set of oars, and they got a stall at Midsumma 2001. And that was when I saw them. I rowed at Melbourne Uni where there were a lot of Olympians. And I was like, what the…? I was hesitant but I went up. And Christopher was there. And Michael Johnson was there. David Wayne might have even been there just chatting away and I put my name down on a clipboard list of people."

The first sign-ups

"The original list would have been around 40 people where the majority hadn't rowed before. So we first focused in on the people that had rowed before, and then within that, the people that had coached before. I was a teacher in my first career and ended up being the rowing coordinator for Morongo Girls' College in Geelong for four years. That's where I developed the coaching skills and the adeptness to run a boat club like driving buses with trailers everywhere."

Bringing in the other founders

"And I dragged a friend of mine in - Meredith Williams - Maxie. I'd met her through the lesbian community, and she was a rower too. I didn't give you a choice but bossed her into it. Sandy Mitchell, one of the founders, had had rowing and coaching experience too. He'd been a cox at Scotch College, I think."

What it meant: coming out, together

"It was like coming out but in a bigger way. It's like when you're holding two parts of your identity separate from each other and there's the person that everybody knows in your family and among your friends. And then there's this secret inside you. Well, we had come out…"

"Harvey Milk said: 'It's very important for us to show visibility because people don't know they know us.' If they don't know our story, they can't put a face of sympathy towards our fight for equality. And so - we were unapologetically out."

The vision that became the club's mission

"For me it was as if there's this persona that we've had in the rowing community as we've become rowers and there's this persona that we are within the queer community. And both are part of our identity. But these two things were just so completely bifurcated and separate and that I guess is where the vision started: rowing club in the queer community and queer club in the rowing community."

The founding year, 2001

"The club started in early 2001 as a cluster of people that galvanised around this vision. It wasn't that coordinated, and it wasn't that professional. I was a bit amateur hour at times. But what we did have was a sense of humour and as Sandy articulated - we gave ourselves permission to fail."