Canberra’s memorable stairway to Heaven

Posted on 21 September, 2026

Welcome to the story of Lynne O’Brien, a staircase above Garema Place, and the radical joy of Canberra’s first gay nightclub.

Who was around long enough to remember those heady nights of strobing mirror balls, incandescent drag queens and a bassline you felt pulsing through your major organs?

And who wants to return there, if only for one night, in November?

It was 1993, and the club was called Heaven. It was a paradise for a generation of queer Canberrans – and for plenty of straight women, curious outsiders, ravers, misfits and individuals who wanted somewhere to move without being watched or judged.

Heaven was a glitter-lit republic and a place where you could be yourself, Lynne says, “or anyone else”.

Lynne was there at the beginning, bringing the idea of Heaven to life, then working on the door and behind the scenes, with a lifetime of music, theatre, activism and sheer event-making voltage crackling through her.

Always orbiting Canberra’s alternative arts scene, Lynne was educated at the School Without Walls, later completing her Masters in Arts Management at the Australian Institute of Music in Sydney. She came out of running the old Upfront Community Theatre in Mort Street when Heaven evolved. She would also direct her passions into running ACT Music and AUSMUSIC, writing curriculum for contemporary music students, recording and promoting a series of women’s bands, mixing sound, putting on events, and helping drive fringe performance.

From the vault, Lynne and friends circa 1993

“I’ve always worked in music and the arts,” she says. “That was my background – putting on events.”

The spark, according to Lynne, was when Zoran Zarevac, who owned City Gym, looked around at the gay men training in his establishment, looked at Canberra’s nightlife, and decided the city was ready.

“He just went, ‘I think it’s time.’” He asked for help. Lynne, with her gay buddy Kim Ware and a loose crew gathered, talked, schemed, and named the place Heaven. Then came the punchline and the manifesto: if the club was Heaven, it needed Ten Commandments.”

They were funny, she says, but the humour was armour over something serious. The rules were about care and respect that resonated with the patrons, no matter their background. Don’t touch people without consent and don’t make this special place unsafe for those who had ascended from the less salubrious nightclub experiences around town (Private Bin, we’re looking at you).

Opening on 23 April 1993 (and running until 2001), Lynne worked the door while Kim organised the bar. They booked entertainment, drag performers and DJs. YaYa was one of the crucial DJs. Just Wayne was in the mix. Annette. C.Quinn became part of the club’s drag mythology. Polly’s Follies came down from Sydney. The Titbits performed. Drag queens and kings, performance artists, burlesque, theatre, live music and rave culture all collided. Later, Sylvie Stern (sadly no longer with us), who had conquered New York providing backing vocals to Madonna, took the reins and gave Heaven its longevity, pulling in DJs from everywhere and pushing it toward a more underground, New York-flavoured identity.

Yaya at last year’s Heaven reunion preaching to the converted

“She turned it into a New York underground club,” Lynne says.

The soundtrack was house, club bangers, techno, pop and whatever would get bodies moving at 1 am. “Pump Up the Volume”, “100% Pure Love”, “Young Hearts” all blared from the speakers. And Canberra raved with zero shame.

Women came because they felt safe and queer people came because the place was theirs.

But all were welcome – from people questioning themselves and the heteros, because inevitably, Heaven was a vibe that all wanted to feel. The crowds often didn’t really arrive until 11 or midnight and the music played until 5 am. In winter, Lynne would stumble down the stairs, bleary-eyed, before scraping ice off the car and heading home to sleep, briefly, before motherhood resumed.

She was raising three children, working Thursday to Sunday nights, and living the sort of life that sounds glamorous only if you leave out the exhaustion. “You don’t sleep when you’ve got kids,” she recalls.

Her own story weaves its way alongside Heaven’s. Lynne lost her mother at 17, married at 18, had three children, and came out at 25 after realising she needed to live what she calls her authentic life. She and her former husband eventually forged a friendship and Lynne and her wife are now godmothers to his youngest child – a truly modern family.

For Lynne, queer activism has always been about justice. She remembers a time when being gay could still cost you your livelihood, safety, family and a future.

Her skill set of defiance, administration, party planning, fundraising, and keeping excellent paper trails helped destigmatise homosexuality both in Canberra and nationally. After Heaven, Lynne went to Melbourne, then Sydney, working for the gay newspaper Capital Q, co-leading the Sydney Pride Centre, producing large New Year’s Eve parties at the Hordern Pavilion, helping raise money for queer community infrastructure, and later being called in to help revive a flailing Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.

The joy of spinning under a mirror ball is one of the highest joys of all

She produced Mardi Gras Fair Day and is now recognised in the Mardi Gras Hall of Fame. While life is infinitely quieter on her farm near Lake Bathurst, she still works for SpringOUT after more than 40 years of service to the LGBTQIA+ community.

But ask about Heaven and the conversation comes back to joy as resistance. The club raised money for community causes, including HIV/AIDS-related work at a time when that mattered with terrifying urgency.

Now Heaven is returning in ritual form. One Night in Heaven 3, part of SpringOUT, is planned as a reunion and revival. On Friday 27 November it will explode with glitter and sparkles in the city at Fiction Nightclub (where the Centre Cinema used to be for the old schoolers). Who knew Canberra was so keen for reunion parties?

Some Canberrans wait all year for the Heaven reunion

Lynne says the first in 2024 sold out and the second pulled close to 1000 people. She expects the convenient city location and warm weather will sell it out again. Those old enough to remember (while still young enough at heart to wear sequins and dancing shoes) will come to reclaim their energy and the nostalgia of freedom. Young people will come with curiosity about the club their elders talk about like a fever dream. After all, Heaven crosses the generational divide, being named Canberra’s Most Popular Club in 1993 by Sony Music, and more recently awarded Gold at the 2024 MUSICACT Awards for its lasting cultural impact.

The night promises DJs Raydar, Matt Chavasse, Just Wayne, YaYa, Chris Fresh, Barrie Barton, Jon Wicks, Fat Freddy, Mr Brown, Squid, Eighty_K, and Marky.

Live performances from Mary Kiani, InkBits and Mother Skye Iris will combine with go-go dancers, visuals, tributes and two generations of club-goers trying to remember the choreography of abandon.

Venus zMantrap performing a tribute to Annette C.Quinn and being altogether too funky…

It is also a fundraiser, with money supporting SpringOUT and the next chapter of Canberra pride events, including plans around the 10th anniversary of marriage equality. Lynne meanwhile, after years of dedicated service to SpringOUT, is preparing to step back, handing the reins to a new generation and relax just a little bit.

Lynne spends most days at her farm, a world away from Heaven and the club scene. But she will be wearing glitter at the reunion

But she will be there until 4 am on November 27 as yet another act of defiance.

She looks at the world now – with its backlash against trans people, the rollback of women’s rights and the grinding persistence of gendered violence with deep sadness, but says she is not defeated. Movements, she believes, go in cycles. Bad cycles pass if people stay vigilant and kind.

DJ Chris Fraser was one of Heaven’s earliest DJ’s and is now with the Ministry of Sound

And in grim times, Lynne says, going out and dancing can still be a political act and joy can be resistance.

So book your ticket to become a part of the city’s queer folklore and to show how the nation’s capital built a space distinctly anti-establishment and filled with spirit.

Dress up. Find the beat. See you on the dance floor!

Photos by Nathan J Lester.