The Australian Women's Register

Summary

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.