Thirty Years of Creative Resistance - Friends of the Earth Australia

...................................................................................................................................................................................................
Nuclear FreeWays Campaign
The Nuclear FreeWay’s (NFW) campaign
was initiated in 1999 by Friends of the Earth’s
anti-uranium collective, principally following
a proposal from collective coordinator
Daniel Voronoff who had been researching
international community responses to the
transport of nuclear waste.
The campaign was developed in response to
a Federal government proposal to transport
nuclear waste across Australia and dump
it at a centralised site near Woomera in
South Australia. FoE’s position has been
that Australia should be progressive in the
way it chooses to deal with nuclear waste;
burying it in a shallow grave is short-sighted,
transporting it halfway across the continent
simply increases the risk of exposure in the
event of an accident.
The project took its inspiration from a project
in the United States called ‘mobile Chernobyl’
which towed a trailer with a replica of the
Chernobyl accident to communities that were
on the proposed transport route for nuclear
waste in Nevada (NIRS Website 2004). FoE
enlisted the support of a group of Melbourne
artists, ESDG (Environmentally Sound
Design Group) who built an impressive lifesize
replica of a nuclear “castor”, a container
for transporting high level nuclear waste
as used in Europe. Nick Curmi of ESDG
worked closely with Daniel to create a prop
that could be towed behind a vehicle between
communities and could be set up like an
information caravan in towns to provide
information about the campaign.
The campaign strategy was to travel along
the transport route for nuclear waste, meet
with local government and community
representatives and encourage these
communities to take a proactive stance of
opposition to the transport of waste.
The first of six tours along the nuclear waste
transport route began in 1999, the various
Loretta O’Brien
tours travelled between Sydney and Woomera
along the two preferred routes for nuclear
waste transport.
Towing a massive anti-nuclear trailer attracts
a lot of interest. Ila Marks and Eric Miller
parked it in a street in suburban Sydney
and it wasn’t long before the fire brigade
arrived, responding to a call warning them
that nuclear waste truck was parked in the
street. The fire-brigade let them off with a
warning. When NFW’s was in the mining
township of Roxby, WMC, the operators of
the Olympic Dam uranium mine, had 24 hour
security following the campaigners, including
following FoE campaigner Bruce Thompson
to the laundry mat to wash his socks. And of
course there were the usual pull overs from
the police, a regular occurrence.
The second tour was launched in Adelaide
on World Environment Day in 2000. That
year Adelaide hosted an international WED
conference and the then Environment
Minister Robert Hill was in town. By this
time Daniel Voronoff had left FoE and
Bruce Thompson and Loretta O’Brien were
coordinating the project. They saw the
Adelaide event as an excellent opportunity to
raise the profile of the nuclear dump issue and
the castor was towed around to every major
WED event or function.
One of these events was a tree planting. The
FoE team split into two groups, one lot hid
the trailer on a suburban street and while
the other signed up as volunteers at the
treeplanting mobile phones at the ready to
call the others when the dignitaries arrived.
When the officials arrived the castor team
was notified and pulled the castor into a
parking spot directly behind the speaking
podium. Minister Hill was not happy to see
the castor parked right next to the podium,
and media shots showed him looking very
uncomfortable with the anti-nuclear symbol
directly behind his head.
FoE 30 Years 80