Let me acknowledge from the start that I’m not the most appropriate person to be posting about Sydney Women’s (Wimmin’s/Womyn’s) Warehouse. Obviously, I’m a man and this was a women-only space. And technically it falls outside the 80s remit since it opened in 1979.

So why am I posting about it?

In the first instance, I simply want to acknowledge what I believe to be an important element of Australian feminist/lesbian history. If my experience of researching this topic is anything to go by, there’s not a lot of information about this project online. So I guess I just want to fly the flag for the Warehouse until there is. (And, of course, if any women would like to post anything up here about it then I’d be delighted.)

There is someone called Louise Mayhew who seems to be researching the project so, as time goes on, it may be worth adding her name to any Google search.

The second reason I want to post about it is because it reflects the state of queer politics in the early 80s. More specifically, that many lesbians identified much more with the women’s movement than they did with the ‘gay’ movement; which they felt to be male-oriented in its goals. I know this to be the case in Australia and the UK: it may also be the case in the USA but I have less evidence for this so can’t make that assertion.

What I know of Sydney Women’s Warehouse (also known as Womyn’s Warehouse or Wimmin’s Warehouse) is that it was established, as a women’s collective, in 1979. The building itself was a five-storey warehouse at 9, Ultimo Road in Sydney’s Haymarket area.This was divided up into a mixture of office and workshop space, as well as a cafe.

One of the aims of the project seems to have been encouraging women to establish various enterprises. For example, a one-day conference was run on “Everything you wanted to know about collectives but were afraid to ask”. Collectives/cooperatives housed in the building included a music coop (which, among other things, gave birth to the band, Stray Dags), a women’s film collection and a screenprinting collective (possibly called ‘Jillposters’ – from the old joke ‘Bill posters will be prosecuted’).

Regular workshops were held where women could learn a range of skills, including traditionally male skills such as carpentry. Dances were also held, often featuring those who had learned to play instruments in the music co-op and these, along with the cafe, helped create an alternative to the commercial queer scene.

The Warehouse closed in 1981 but some of the projects it spawned continued long after that. Stray Dags, for example, had some commercial success and Harridan Screenprinters (1981-88) and the Tin Sheds were two of the enterprises to emerge from the screenprinting collective.