International Day of Peace action in Port Adelaide

Written by: Ned K on 22 September 2026

(Day of Peace participants march across the Port River Bridge. All photos supplied courtesy Fernando Goncalves)

On Sunday 20 September over 300 people gathered at the Workers' Memorial at the Black Diamond Corner at Port Adelaide as part of International Day of Peace actions against AUKUS across all States and Territories capitals and major regional centres such as Port Kembla as well.

The over 300 people attending the Port Adelaide actions were from many different groups including local resident members of Port Adelaide Community Opposing AUKUS (PACOA),

(PACOA speaker Eileen Darley)

Friends of Palestine, trade unions, women against war groups, environmental groups, First People's and tertiary education sector.

The significance of gathering at the Workers' Memorial at Port Adelaide was that previous generations of workers in the Port Adelaide area had taken action against Australia's involvement in imperialist wars, including the World War 1 and the Vietnam War. Seamen and dock workers at Port Adelaide had been active in the Vietnam Moratorium campaign and many lived in the Port Adelaide and Osborne area, the very place where the Australian Government and its master US and UK imperialists planned to waste $368 billions of taxpayer's money building nuclear powered and armed submarines at Osborne Naval Base, a few kilometres from the Workers Memorial.

There were many speakers demanding an end to AUKUS and no nuclear submarines.

A First People's speaker from APY Lands, Coralie Lester reminded everyone of the devasting impact on First Peoples from the UK's atomic bomb explosions at Maralinga in the 1950s and the danger to people today not only of AUKUS making Port Adelaide a nuclear target, but the dangers associated with turning South Australia in to an AUKUS nuclear waste dump.

One of many highlights of the day's actions was the arrival of Peace walkers, waving First Peoples’ flags. They had walked from Port Augusta in the mid north of SA to Port Adelaide, timing their arrival at Port Adelaide with the International Day of Peace actions.

Their arrival was enthusiastically received by all present, leading to dancing on the Port wharves to the music of the Fiddle We Must Band.

The following day, a delegation of International Day of Peace participants took the Anti- AUKUS no nuclear subs message to the Port Adelaide office of federal MP Mark Butler, whose office at Port Adelaide is a "stone's throw" from the Workers Memorial.

As the people's movement against AUKUS grows, those MPs who ignore it will be case aside, especially an MP like Mark Butler whose Seat covers the site on which the nuclear submarines are planned to be built.

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