In 1982, the Victorian Government announced plans to relocate the QV Medical Centre to the Monash Medical Centre in Clayton, Melbourne; demolish all buildings in the Lonsdale St and Swanston St block; and sell the land.

These plans outraged the community who claimed that there was more than just bricks and mortar at stake. The hospital building was a symbol of women’s history, a feminist tribute to the legacy of Constance Stone and the other pioneering women who furthered women’s rights, women’s health, and fought against 19th-century prejudices against women. To demolish the building and sell the land was to destroy a significant historical Australian landmark.

In 1987 the Queen Victoria Hospital Action Campaign protested the proposed relocation by staging Saturday sit-ins outside the hospital. Little notice was taken by the Government and the hospital relocated to Clayton, Melbourne, in 1989.

Once again, women banded together, actively campaigning to preserve a part of the Queen Victoria Memorial Hospital site on Lonsdale Street. In a bitter 15-year struggle, with lobbying led by Queen Victoria Hospital Action Group (which became the Queen Victoria Women's Centre Inc in 1991), women fought the Government.

The campaigning was successful and in 1994 the Victorian Government gave the original tower building to the women of Victoria to be used as a women’s centre.

Victoria’s first woman premier, Joan Kirner, was instrumental in saving the site and in 1991 she presented the Inc Group with funding to develop an architectural brief.

The Queen Victoria Women’s Centre (QVWC) was established in 1994 by a parliamentary Act. The Act created a QVWC Trust to govern the Centre and gave provision of management and ownership of the QVWC land.

To read more about the ins and outs of the campaign click on check out the National Foundation for Australian Women's Archive Project or drop into the QVWC Office and purchase a copy The Host Behind – The Campaign for a Victorian Women’s Centre, by Barbara Cameron.