Dawn O'Donnell

Dawn O'Donnell (born 1927 or 1928 – died 10 June 2007), was an Australian entrepreneur and a supporter of Sydney's LGBT community. She has been credited with being a defining early influence on the gay and lesbian nightlife in Sydney's Oxford Street and Newtown.

Early life Born circa 1927 or 1928 in the Sydney suburb of Paddington, she won a bursary to St Vincent's College, Potts Point, run by the Sisters of Charity. She left school at age 15, and three years later, aged 18, won the Australian ladies speed skating championship, turned professional and taught at the Glaciarium before going to London and Paris. She was briefly married to a butcher named Des Irwin.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, O'Donnell controlled a string of lesbian and gay venues in East Sydney, including: Jools on Crown Street Patchs nightclub on Oxford Street Flo's Palace The Exchange Hotel Ruby Reds on Crown Street (Sydney's first lesbian bar)

Some of these ventures were run in partnership with the late French restaurateur Roger Claude Teyssedre and controversial Sydney businessman Abe Saffron.

During the 1980s, O'Donnell began to shift her focus from Oxford Street to the Inner West suburb of Newtown. She bought the Newtown and Imperial Hotels in nearby Erskineville, transforming the Newtown area into a gay precinct to rival Oxford Street. The Imperial Hotel featured in the opening scenes of the movie, The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.

According to Graeme Browning (a.k.a. "Mitzi Macintosh"), who performed drag shows at O'Donnell-owned venues for 10 years, "she made the Sydney drag scene what it is, but our gay scene wouldn't be what it is without her either." Another drag performer, David Williams (aka "Beatrice") said that "she invented the idea of Oxford Street", helping to make Sydney one of the gay capitals of the world. Their relationship continued until O'Donnell's death from ovarian cancer, aged 79, on 10 June 2007. O'Donnell's funeral service was held at St Canice's Catholic Church in Elizabeth Bay, Sydney.