I run a gay sauna in Australia. You’d be surprised who comes through the door

On a quiet weekday morning, people enter an unassuming building on a side street in Darlinghurst.

Before it opens to the public at 10am, there are towels to dry, floors to mop and beds to wipe down.

It’s all part of an important daily ritual in this gay sauna: the deep cleansing.

Glenn McNamara, owner and manager of Sauna X by 357, tells SBS’s Queer Renegades podcast“Laundry is really one of the most important things.”

“But there are a lot of moving parts. One thing stops and I’ll stop everything until something is fixed,” he says.

Walking past the dimly lit reception and dressing room feels like entering a labyrinth. Each door leads to a room of different sizes with different furniture: a mirror, a pendulum, a glory hole. Sure enough, several dryers rotate towels at high speed in the laundry room. Signs on the walls provide instructions for permission and cruising. An internal passageway leads directly to a neighboring nightclub.

During our tour, McNamara fields several texts and phone calls — “there’s always something” — and manages the complex logistics of running a gay sauna in his stride.

“I usually get here early because I have to meet a professional. I order cleaning products all the time. The TV breaks, buy a new TV, install the TV. If there are cracks in the beds [them]buy a new bed.”

As we walk down, we enter what McNamara calls the “wet area.”

There is one important rule on this floor, he explains.

“No [sex] in the spa. You are more than welcome to have a drink, maybe even some oral, preferably without liquids. But no f–king in the spa because it’s not a hygienic thing to do.”

More than a place to ‘scratch an itch’

McNamara opened the sauna in 2024 after the closure of another long-running sauna, 357, from which he drew inspiration for the name.

He had worked at 357 before its closure, first as a cleaner and later as a manager, along with friends and co-owners Ty Dovans and Luke Frappell. The experience left a mark on McNamara, who left a two-decade career in corporate customer service to join 357 in 2020 after several stints on and off since 2012.

For him, running a sauna is about continuing a long tradition of creating safe gathering spaces in Sydney.

“It’s a very essential part of the queer community,” says McNamara.

“People come to scratch because they itch. They come because they are horny or because they want to have sex in a place that is not someone else’s house [or] they don’t want to risk doing something in public.

“This creates a safe space for them to do that. At the same time, it’s also a place for queer people to be themselves and be around other queer people.”

Ian Roberts, former rugby league player and LGBTQIA+ advocate, agrees that saunas have always served as meeting places.

“I used to go on the weekends, but often it wasn’t about the sex. It was just to go because it’s a cool place to hang out,” he says.

‘There’s a bar there, there’s food and drinks. [Saunas] were just a different kind of bar.”

Some of the people who come through the doors of McNamara’s sauna are in the closet. Many are in their 70s and 80s and come to live with their “chosen family,” he explains.

“They all sit at the bar. They have a chinwag. They might go for a walk upstairs if they see something they like, but that’s not why they’re here. They’re here to connect with friends,” says McNamara.

“There’s a gentleman, probably in his eighties, who comes in with a huge trench coat. Always very well dressed. He has two slices of cake, coffee and watches movies. And for him, that’s that safe gay space for him.

From undercover to legal: gay saunas as safe spaces

Historically, the trajectory of gay saunas from clandestine operations to legal locations reflects that of gay liberation.

Bathhouses have traditional origins in Greco-Roman times, but gay saunas as places for sex and intercourse only emerged in Australia in 1967, in Bondi Junction.

At the time, gay saunas weren’t just illegal in NSW – thanks to the Disorderly Houses Act 1943 – but just being gay was still a crime. To be more specific, sexual acts by homosexual men were criminalized across the country.

South Australia was the first to change these laws, but not until 1975; NSW did not follow suit until 1984.

This did not deter the legendary lesbian entrepreneur Dawn O’Donnell of knocking on Waverley Council’s door, dressed in white gloves, and applying to take over a ‘health club’ in Bondi Junction.

Many others followed suit, and in the 1970s and 1980s places like Sydney’s Ken’s in Kensington (then known as Ken’s Karate Klub) and Melbourne’s Steamworks operated covertly.

These locations became the target of police raids, and by the 1980s, during the AIDS crisis, there were campaigns to close saunas altogether. In 1984, this public anti-sauna campaign was led by former Conservative politician Reverend Fred Nile.

But these saunas functioned as important places for men to come together and raise awareness about HIV, with many working with community organizations, such as ACON.

It’s a legacy that continues today, says McNamara.

“We set up a wall with brochures from ACON on things like STD health,” he says.

This building once operated as Bodyline, the first sauna in Australia’s history to operate legally after a court case. The 1991 judge’s ruling in the NSW Land and Environment Court sent a strong message: saunas were essential environments for safe, consensual sex between men.

Changing times

Sauna culture in Australia has continued to evolve over the decades, with many now opening their doors to the wider gay community.

Gay parties are held in gay saunas, and some, including McNamara’s, have one night a week dedicated to being inclusive of all genders.

“We have always offered free access to both trans ladies and cis ladies, because people in the trans community, for example, are some of the most marginalized, both financially in terms of employment and sexual violence,” he says.

Whether this trend is adopted by other saunas or becomes a permanent paradigm shift is up to the next generation, says McNamara.

“I’m old. It’s going to be the next generation that will dictate what they want.

“I think there will always be a need for a gay male-only space. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be a continued need for other parts of the gender spectrum that need space to [meet] maybe more than one day a week.”

For McNamara, making saunas more inclusive is also about embracing diversity. He says it’s important to move away from traditional messaging about the idealized “chiseled” gay man.

This includes promoting body positivity and responding to investigations of white privilege in sauna culture.

“You won’t see models or chiseled bodies in any of our ads.

“I mean, I’m a chubby guy myself. If I went to a place like that, I wouldn’t feel comfortable because they project that that’s the ideal.

“And I can tell you that’s not the ideal. People like different body types.”

Queer Renegades is available now SBS audio. New episodes are released weekly.

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