As part of SBS's Deep Water series, journalist Mark Whittaker investigated a series of assaults and murders that occurred on Adelaide's gay beats.



Similar attacks in Sydney, focussed around gay beats in Sydney's eastern suburbs, are now the subject of NSW police taskforce Operation Parrabell, which is investigating 88 deaths that were recorded as suicide or misadventure for potential gay-hate motives.

But around the same time as the peak period of Sydney attacks – the '80s and early '90s – similar things were happening at the gay beats in parklands surrounding Adelaide.

"People were saying this phenomena was confined to Sydney, and something in me doubted that would be true. I didn’t see a good reason why it would only be in Sydney," Whittaker told BuzzFeed News.



"The gay community in Adelaide was saying it was about one attack a week."

Like in Sydney, Adelaide police were reluctant to investigate suspected gay bashings and murders – in some cases, because they had committed them.

Former police officer Mick O'Shea told SBS his colleagues used to brag "every bloody day of the week" about throwing the gay men they would find at beats into the river.