Ms Gorrie was part of a volunteer network based in the Blue Mountains that provided home assistance, personal support and palliative care during the nineties. 

At Lithgow’s first commemoration of World AIDs Day, held at Lithgow Library on Friday, Jay Gorrie shared her story. 

Her volunteer group was intentionally given the vague name of ‘Community Support Network’, so that clients would not have to deal with the stigma of being known AIDS sufferers. 

“We were very stretched on the ground, there were not many carers to go around. So they threw us in the deep end,” she said. 

“The main importance was confidentiality. It was very important we maintained confidentiality. Sometimes our clients had not told their parents, even that they were gay when they were gay. 

“When talking to the neighbours or families of the clients you had to somehow not let them know why you were there. That was our most difficult point.”

Ms Gorrie explained that many of her clients had moved to the mountains because they could no longer afford to live in Sydney. 

“I don’t think I ever met any who weren't incredibly brave about what they were facing,” she said. 

At the peak of the AIDS epidemic in Australia in the early 1990s about 1,000 Australians died from AIDS each year. These numbers declined when anti-retroviral medication was introduced in the mid-1990s. 

 “Quite a lot of our clients put off dying, they’d be waiting for some particular event, it might be a birthday or a relative coming from overseas. But we had one young man who desperately wanted to do one more Mardi Gras,” she said.

“And so all the carers rallied and we took him down to the city. And we loaded his bed onto the truck that CSN were entering in the Mardi Gras, and were we all danced along behind him. And every now and then we’d say,’How is he?’ and they’d say, ’He’s still with us!’.”

“At the end of the Mardi Gras they took him to the big party, which takes place at the park at the end of the parade. And he had an hour and half of party and then they took him home. He died two hours later. But he’d got what he wanted, he’d been hanging on to that and he was given it.” 

“So there were times that were quite good and times that were very dreadful.” 

Ms Gorrie said her clients were not only gay men.

“Our youngest client was three years old when he died. His mother died three months before he did and she left her son in the care of CSN. Not me personally, I never met the little boy, my colleagues saw him through to the end.” 

“People tend to assume the AIDS epidemic was about gay men. It wasn’t. Some of my clients were women, some were drug addicts.

“We were taught very carefully that one must be extremely non-judgemental. And usually we managed that quite nicely.” 

Ms Gorrie said it was "the best moment of my life” when the service was no longer necessary in the mountains as the epidemic waned. 

“It was heart rending in many ways, and sometimes amusing but always very satisfying. It was wonderful when we were no longer needed,” she said. 

“Many of my friends are HIV positive, they used to be my clients but they survived.”

The service set up a memorial park in Medlow Bath where the names of those clients who passed away are written on trees. 

You can find out more information about HIV/AIDS in Australia and around the world on the World AIDS Day website.

ACON provides education, support and mental health services associated with HIV/AIDS.