Bijou Theatre

The Bijou Theatre was located in Roundtree street, just off Darling Street. It was the last of the old 1920 inner city theatres that was still operating in the late 1970's. It was in the style of the Valhalla theatre in Glebe and showed art house movies. In the early 1980's it closed due to lack of patrons and was boarded up for may years until it was redeveloped into office space and a restaurant. The Sydney University Recreational Art Team (RAT) organised a illegal RAT Party at this venue in the mid 1980's which turned into a huge event. I remember seeing Michael Hutchinson, Peter Philips, John Hargraves and other Sydney celebrities there. Late into Sunday morning as the party continued on and a odd collection of punks, drag queens, mods and new romantics started to wander down Darling Street the police from Balmain Station turned up but because of the sheer number of young people at the event just asked the organisers to modified the music rather then closing the event.