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    23 May 2025 19:00
    Oxford Hotel, 134 Oxford Street, Darlinghurst
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    Town Hall Hotel, 326 King St, Newtown
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    Oxford Hotel, 134 Oxford Street, Darlinghurst

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Acknowledgement of Country

Harbour City Bears acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the lands we are on. We acknowledge their continuing connection to this land and to culture. We acknowledge the significant contributions Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have made to this Country and recognise the important role they continue to play within our diverse communities.

Always was, always will be, Aboriginal land.

ABOUT US 

Harbour City Bears are Sydney’s only community group for Bears – hairy gay men – as well as our admirers and friends.

We organise more than 140 events each year, including weekly social gatherings, quarterly dance parties, group dinners, and various community outings.

The highlights of our calendar are our two major annual festivals: Bear Essentials and Bear Pride.

We currently have over 1,200 active members, making us the largest Bear association in the Southern Hemisphere, and one of the largest in the world!

We host a wide range of events throughout the year:

  • Festivals: Bear Essentials (held during Sydney’s Mardi Gras season) and Bear Pride (in the cooler month of August) These are Australia’s most popular gay Bear community festivals, attracting visitors from around the world to celebrate Sydney’s vibrant Bear culture.
  • Dance parties: Our quarterly Bear Pit parties and the iconic UnderBEAR underwear party during Mardi Gras
  • Weekly social meetups: Every Friday night (our party night – great for dancing!) and every Sunday afternoon (a relaxed social catch-up)
  • Community activities: Group dinners, games nights, first-aid courses, picnics, and more
  • Charity fundraising: Supporting a variety of community causes

Harbour City Bears is a not-for-profit organisation. All profits from our events and fundraising activities are reinvested into the club or donated to the community charities we support.

Email:  info@hcbears.com.au

Postal address:

Harbour City Bears
PO Box 1532
DARLINGHURST NSW 1300
Australia


The Harbour City Bears Constitution

The Harbour City Bears constitution is available here.


Lifetime Membership

Is there someone that you think deserves a life membership for their dedication to the bear community?
There is a process that needs to be followed as per the constitution (see below) - here's an easy to follow form for people to fill out. 

Life Membership Nomination Form

Harbour City Bears Constitution 

- September 2019

"6. Appointment of life members

(1) A nomination for life membership must be made in writing to the secretary, with the written support of 20 ordinary members of the association and with the written consent of the person being nominated for life membership.

(2) The committee must consider the nomination at its next scheduled meeting and must resolve at that meeting whether to accept or reject the nomination.

(3) If the committee accepts the nomination, then the nomination shall be put to the next general meeting of the association for ratification by the membership."



BEAR FLAG

The International Bear Brotherhood Flag was designed to represent the bear subculture within the LGBT community. The colours of the flag are meant to include the colours of the furs of animal bears throughout the world, not necessarily referring to human skin and hair colour tones: Dark brown, orange/rust, golden yellow, tan, white, gray, and black. The flag was designed with inclusion in mind. The gay bear culture celebrates secondary sex characteristics such as growth of body hair and facial hair, which is typically considered a "bear" trait.

BACKGROUND

Craig Byrnes created the Bear pride flag in 1995. Byrnes' undergraduate degree in psychology involved designing a senior project about the bear culture that has exploded since the early 1980s, of which he had first-hand experience. He thought it might be fitting to design a flag that would best represent the bear community and include it with the results of his research. To do this, he received help from another influential member of the bear cultural community. Four variations were sewing machine-constructed and Byrnes won approval to display the four 3-by-5-foot (0.9 m × 1.5 m) prototype flags at the Chesapeake Bay Bears "Bears of Summer" events in July 1995. The winning design (a version created by Paul Witzkoske) is a field of simple horizontal stripes with a paw print in the upper left corner

By Kicior99 - Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6322012

The bear flag flown next to the rainbow flag as an expression of bear and gay pride

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