Hobart's Drag Kings Bring Bogan Masculinity and Queer Community to Tasmania's Stages
A small but growing community of drag kings in Hobart, Tasmania, is performing bogan-inspired characters in mainstream venues following the closure of the city's only dedicated gay bar in 2020. Performers like Dirty Damo, Gary Snow, and Barry Bothways draw on working-class Australian masculinity — complete with mullets, high-visibility shirts, and tool belts — to create comedic, satirical shows that have found broad audiences. The scene illustrates how drag performance can serve both as personal identity exploration and as a vehicle for building unlikely cross-community connections.
Since Hobart lost its only dedicated LGBTQIA+ venue during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, drag king performers in Tasmania's capital have expanded into mainstream pubs, comedy clubs, and mixed venues, reaching audiences well beyond the queer community. Performers including Dirty Damo (Soph Keegan), Gary Snow (Shan Hooper), and Barry Bothways (Phoebe Adams) have built working-class, bogan-coded personas inspired by personal experience, family members, and post-war Australian masculinity. Dirty Damo's lip-sync routine about Centrelink's hold music — performed with a corded phone and clipboard — has become a crowd favourite, while Gary Snow's sleeveless flannel and flatback cap persona was shaped by Shan Hooper's 24 years navigating the automotive industry. Phoebe Adams, 53, notes that Barry Bothways has fostered genuine camaraderie with cisgender heterosexual men in audiences, who use correct pronouns and treat performers as peers. All three performers describe drag as transformative beyond the stage, crediting it with increased confidence, stronger community ties, and a clearer sense of personal identity. The Backdoor Boyz duo and others in the scene say the loss of a dedicated queer space, while painful, inadvertently broadened drag's reach and normalised queer performance in traditionally heteronormative settings.
What's missing
The article does not provide figures on the size of Hobart's broader LGBTQIA+ community, audience attendance numbers, or whether efforts are underway to reopen a dedicated queer venue in the city.
What different sources said
- ABC AustraliaCenter
Meet the mullet-bearing drag kings of Hobart lip-syncing about Centrelink
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