Qtopia founder David Polson was one of the first people diagnosed with AIDS in Australia. He died today

A year with a musical cabaret in a Neutral Bay theatre followed and then a few years in London doing temp work, among them, sending medical personnel to Saudi Arabia.

He returned to Sydney in 1981 and became a barman at the new five-star Regent Hotel. By the time of his diagnosis, he had become manager of the Don Burrows Supper Club.

In response to that poster, David came under the care of Professor David Cooper at Sydney’s St Vincent, whose research, with Professor Ron Penny, would lead to the first description of the seroconversion illness which accompanies initial HIV infection in many people.

Professor Cooper’s National Centre for HIV Epidemiology and Clinical Research (since 2011, the Kirby Institute) proceeded to take a leading role in most of the key trials that ultimately led to the optimal use of life-saving combination treatments now widely available to people with HIV throughout the world. Over the next 30 years, David Polson underwent more than 28 drug trials with Dr Cooper, who became a close friend.

The trials left him with nausea, liquid dystrophy, hearing loss, imbalance and kidney disease, yet as he fought his own battle, he assumed a public role to support his fellow sufferers and to dispel the ignorance and fear.

Walking through St Vincent’s Ward 17 South for AIDS patients – four beds to a room – in the early days as the virus took hold, he recognised 90 per cent of patients as friends. New infection rates would peak at 2400 in 1987 before declining to a low of 719 cases in 1999. Eight thousand Australians would succumb. David would attend a funeral a month.

He gave up a career and dating. By 2011, he was taking about 48 tablets a day. “I keep swallowing those tablets and I don’t mind because it’s better than the alternative.” By about 2020, his condition was confirmed as undetectable, which also meant it was untransmittable.

After Professor Cooper’s death in March 2018 and a conversation with his widow, Dorrie, David took up his vision to establish a space to honour the history of those affected by HIV/AIDS. With an endowment from Lachlan and Sarah Murdoch, support of the state and city, the patronage of Ita Buttrose and Michael Kirby and David as founding chair, the old Darlinghurst Police Station was transformed and, on 24 February 2024, Qtopia was born.

Adopting Michael Kirby’s counsel that the museum should also embrace “queer people who had been oppressed, persecuted and discriminated against over the decades” the museum took on a broader remit centred around three principles: memory, celebration, and education.

The first – a stark, immensely moving AIDS memorial which houses a reconstruction of St Vincent’s Ward 17 South with much of the contents of the original and the contribution of the Catholic Sisters of Charity “who cared without judgment”. Their mantra was “we are here to look after these people, to love and support and care for them.”

A wall of love remembrance garden has been planted, in David’s honour, in what was once the police station garden.

David’s passionate eloquent unrelenting advocacy led to him being made a Member of the Order of Australia in Australia Day 2023 honours “for significant service to community health through HIV education and advocacy roles”.

He is survived by his sister Ruth Henning, two nephews, William and Edward, his beloved terrier, Rosie, and a galaxy of friends who knew him as Polly.

To the end he was true to his mantra, which was H.O.P.E. – humour, optimism, perseverance and energy.

Mark McGinness