Cockburn Sound Women's Peace Camp

Sound Women’s Peace Collective was formed from Women For Survival after their successful Pine Gap Women’s Peace Camp in 1983 to organize another national women’s protest at Cockburn Sound, WA.
The Western Australian group, Women’s Action for Nuclear Disarmament, played a key role in preparing this event. It was held in December 1-14, 1984 at Point Perron in Cockburn Sound, near the HMAS Stirling Naval Base on Garden Island and close to Fremantle where nuclear capable US warships frequently docked and utilized the services of local women for ‘rest and recreation’. An innovative Peace Train was organized with the railways and unions to bring women from the Eastern states for this action, but the costs became burdensome; the Peace train was transformed into a Road Train, a cavalcade of buses travelling together, but even this proved impossible to coordinate. The memory and idyll of the Peace Train remains however in posters and newsletter images, which are testament to its ingenuity.
The Cockburn Sound Women’s Peace Camp anti nuclear protest and encampment was held at the HMAS Stirling Naval Base (Garden Island) in December 1984. Women came from all over Australia to join the camp.

The local media painted the women as wild lesbians:
‘Anti-nuclear protesters stormed the gates to Stirling… 200 painted, chanting women worked themselves into a frenzy and pushed comrades over the fence. 75 were arrested. On one side is the strong lesbian element, butch hairstyles and boiler suits, and on the other those who genuinely wanted a peaceful protest.‘
Dale Kerford, The Sound Telegraph, 12 December 1984

‘The Cockburn Sound Peace Camp was not just about anti-nuclear politics - for me, it was also about personal and sexual politics. One afternoon I was walking back to camp when a rock was thrown at me by a group of young guys in a car. It was a confronting moment. I wondered, “Do they hate me for what I'm trying to do, or do they hate me because they think I'm a lesbian?” At that moment I appreciated just how much a person's sexuality – or a person's perceived sexuality – can be used not only to dismiss that person but also to demonise them.’ Liz Wood, 2002 (Gay Museum)
Written by Jo Darbyshire, 2024.