North Head

Stub — North Head is the rugged headland at the northern entrance to Sydney Harbour, within Sydney Harbour National Park. Like the nearby Shelley Headland, it was a known gay beat from the 1970s through the 1990s — a place where men went to meet other men, and where isolation made them targets for predatory violence.

The most prominent case at North Head is that of Scott Johnson, an American mathematician whose naked body was found at the base of the cliffs at Blue Fish Point on 10 December 1988. Three coronial inquests followed over almost thirty years. The third inquest (2017) found he had fallen “as a result of actual or threatened violence from unidentified persons who attacked him because they perceived him to be homosexual.”

North Head is distinct from — though geographically close to — the Shelley Headland (see shelley-headland.md), where Mark Stewart (1976) and Paul Rath (1977) died.

Research needed:

• Blue Fish Point precise coordinates and description
• Full beat geography of North Head — paths, approaches, documented use period
• Traditional name(s) for North Head and Blue Fish Point (Gayamaygal Country)
• Whether any physical marker exists or has been proposed post-SCOI
• Northern Beaches Council memorial planning
• Whether Scott Johnson’s case is the only one at this specific location or if other cases in the project scope also occurred at North Head proper

Sources: Sackar Inquiry Vol. 2; Deep Water documentary (Blue A/Blackfella Films, 2016); Bondi Badlands ep. 5 (Callaghan G, 2021).