Onjei Bond (he/him)
She did drag performances whilst serving compulsory military service. She was Queen of the red-light district—and is now the green-light symbol all down Cuba. Credited as being a huge influence for Georgina Beyer, she campaigned for Mayor eighteen years before, with the cheeky farmer-esque slogan: “GET IN BEHIND!”. Friends with Dana de Milo, (of Aunty Dana’s fame), and the winner of the hugely influential court case, POLICE VS RUPE, three years before Stonewall. She showed up to parliament to apologise for libel dressed all in black and stepping out of a limo, and three days later appeared shirtless at the Trentham races. Occasionally, she’d sleep in a coffin.
Named outrageous, illegal, the Queen of Queens and “the most visible transgender New Zealander of her time”, this whakawāhine paved the way for transgender rights as we know it in Aotearoa New Zealand. And yet, for the four years I’ve lived in Wellington, I thought the woman in the traffic light was a metaphorical drag queen, a sort of Queer national personification.
Say hello to Carmen Rupe, trailblazer, revolutionary, and a figure you’ve definitely seen but possibly never recognised.
early life
Carmen grew up with six siblings in Taumarunui, close with her mother and exploring feminine aspects from an early age. She was particularly inspired by the late World War II victory rolls and, unrelatedly, nuns.
At 18 she was called for compulsory military service. During this time, she put on a drag performance for her peers, titled Ballet Latrines Les Girls, and inspired by the infamous Sydney club of the same name.
After her service, Rupe worked as a nurse before travelling and working in Sydney as a performer. It was at this point she chose her name, from the titular Carmen in The Loves of Carmen.
In Sydney, she started to fully lean into performing, learning several of her key acts—including her infamous performance with two diamond pythons, both two meters long. The act was inspired by the movie Cobra Woman, and involved careful manoeuvring of the two very large reptiles—named Simba and Topaz—who “used to coil around my wig [making it] fall off my head while I was dancing”.
Another common act was her signature finishing performance. As her show came to a close, she’d remove her wig for her final dramatic reveal—the fact she was assigned male at birth—a scene I can only imagine as a less dramatic Sasha Velour performance, a wig cap appearing instead of a cascade of rose petals.
She would go on to travel to Auckland from Sydney, working along the Waterfront for a few years—briefly meeting Dana De Milo—before finally moving to Wellington and opening her infamous venues.
coffee on the balcony
In 1967 she set up permanent shop on Vivian Street, opening ‘Carmen’s International Coffee Lounge’—a Café-slash-brothel which ran from six to six, was vandalised often, and was frequently raided by cops.
She describes how, when she first opened it, she “painted the whole place red, with purple carpets and black leather furniture and all the staff were drag queens, female impersonators and also gay guys”.
It was at this Coffee Lounge that Carmen Rupe and Georgina Beyer would meet, Beyer meeting Rupe when she was 16 and had first moved to Wellington. She would later work for Carmen at the Lounge, describing how “the law worked against us so we had to live in this twilight zone. Camen was an omnipresent figure...she protected us from the haters and homophobes”.
Beyer was not the only famous figure to work for Rupe. Dana De Milo worked for a time at ‘The Balcony’, picking up the last name ‘De Milo’ on Rupe’s advice. In fact, all of Rupe’s employees were queer, most ‘transsexual’ women and/or drag queens, and some lesbians and gay men. She would later describe how "all the drag queens I had working for me were very, very stunning and beautiful. They used to wear a lot of wigs, a lot of makeup and lovely miniskirts or split dresses and low-top dresses”.
Carmen soon had to open another venue to serve the people waiting in line to enter the Coffee Lounge, which she named ‘The Peacock’. She went on to open several further storefronts: on Cuba was ‘The Egyptian Tearoom’, ‘Carmen’s Down Town’, and an antique store named ‘Carmen’s Curios’; on Vivian she opened ‘Cleopatra’s Coffee Lounge’; and, in Hataitai, a bedroom-brothel-slash-hotel called ‘The Cottage’.
Finally, in 1960, Carmen opened her most famous venue. ‘The Balcony’, a nightclub on Victoria. It was located where Te Matapihi Ki Te Ao Nui, The Wellington Central Library, is now.
Being the host, Carmen was there nightly—“dressed up as a madam, you know, a classy madam, tits hanging out and split dresses"—performing, working, and keeping an eye on the crowd. She called Wellington “The Vice capital of New Zealand”, proven by her brazen claim on Tonight at Nine that some of the most influential and homophobic politicians of the time frequented her establishments—being homosexual or bisexual themselves.
It was this claim that would lead to her appearance at the Parliament's Privileges Committee, called in by then-PM Robert Muldoon on charges of libel.
She arrived in a limo.
De Milo describes how “they, [parliament] made a big thing out of it and she never even apologised. She said ‘I never’ even when it came down to it”.
police v rupe
Historically, gay bars in the states would get raided by cops looking for those in the ‘wrong’ clothing— enforcing laws against ‘crossdressing’. This practise sparked the Stonewall riots—a community response to these humiliating and dangerous raids.
Aotearoa had no such laws. This is largely in part defined by the Police V Rupe case, which settled the matter of crossdressing before the first brick of stonewall ever entered the kiln—ensuring that, legally in Aotearoa, clothes really didn’t have a gender.
Police discrimination towards the Queer community was rife throughout Rupe’s life. She describes how “the police were very, very heavy. They hated gay people. They hated drag queens and they hated lesbians”. Rupe was illegally running a bar and brothel—but her business was under increased scrutiny due to the fact she was ‘transexual’.
In 1966, Rupe left the club she was working in. Wearing a black dress, heels, and makeup, she was offered a lift home by a man on Little Queen Street. The man then proceeded to do an illegal right-hand turn—leading to the car being pulled over. Rupe, who had been arrested and fined for ‘Offensive Behaviour’ before—the charge most often used against ‘crossdressing’ at this time—was recognised and promptly arrested by a ‘Constable Green’. She describes how “[he] arrested me because I was in drag... He pulled me out of the car and arrested me for wearing women's clothes.”
Historically Rupe, and many other ‘crossdressers’ of her time, would take the charge head on—accepting the fine or prison time to avoid the lengthy, expensive, and extremely public route of disputing it. That night, Rupe decided enough was enough. She hired a lawyer and pleaded not guilty. The first day she arrived at court they told her to go home and change—she had arrived in women’s clothes.
In the end, the judge ruled that New Zealand had never had laws against wearing clothes of the opposite sex, and that Rupe had not been in drag to cause offence, outrage, or revulsion—and therefore was unable to be tried under the 'Offensive Behaviour’ charge.
On the 26th of January, 1966, Rupe’s charges were dropped.
De Milo describes how this “made it much easier for the girls in Auckland, because they [the police] were very heavy in Auckland”, and they could no longer justify their arrests as a response to Offensive acts. She never wore men’s clothes again.
get in behind
1977.
Carmen runs for Mayor. Every policy item is considered outrageous, shocking, and morally repugnant. She appears often in ballgowns and limos, riding the notoriety of The Balcony and her court case, lighting up the election with radical vision. Her manifesto promised the lowering of the legal drinking age to 18, the legalisation of prostitution, abortion, and homosexual conduct, the legalisation of nudist beaches, and for bars to be allowed to stay open till midnight—or even (gasp) 2 am.
In a political debate leading up to her election day, she blithely argued, "I am better looking than Sir Francis [Kitts], I am more charming than Michael Fowler, and I could beat [Tony] Brunt in a brawl any day."
She never won—but she did rank fourth in the popular vote, paving the start of a road Georgina Beyer would finish in 1995.
offstage
In 1979, Rupe’s lease on The Balcony wasn’t renewed. Without her main storefront, she decided to shut her other businesses, leaving Wellington for Sydney.
Before she left, she was ceremonially crowned Queen of Wellington by three hundred of her peers, in front of a ball organised in her honour.
In Sydney, she remained immersed in her community. Organising AIDS fundraisers and managing community centres, Rupe was just as well known in Australia as Aotearoa. In 2008, she headlined the Decade of the Divas float at the Syndey Gay and Lesbian Mardie Gras. She did so on her mobility scooter. Topless.
On her 70th birthday, the Wellington Police gifted her a Police Helmet—painted purple, covered in glitter, and wrapped in a pink feather boa—paired with a formal apology for their past behaviour.
In Sydney on 15 December 2011, aged 75, Carmen Rupe passed away.
As a tribute to her extraordinary life, she was put in the green lights down Cuba in 2016, a physical testament to her influence and connection to Wellington.
She is, to this day, one of the most significant, iconic, and memorable whakawāhine of her time. Her legacy is felt in a million unnoticeable ways throughout Aotearoa—even if it’s as simple as a green silhouette, watching over Ivy.