It's a terrific movie, ANU student Angela Chen Chen rejoiced. For in this blockbuster we see Wonder Woman not only intervening to end one war (the Great War of 1914-1918) but pledging she will use her powers to end all wars, for ever.

But hey guys, Ms Chen Chen alerted the committed 150 of us, "What if [here in a real world armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons that threaten to annihilate mankind] we may not have Wonder Woman to save us?"

And so instead of relying on Wonder Woman, Ms Chen Chen urged us (echoing every other speaker on the day) we really must get behind the new treaty being negotiated at the UN by 130 countries to outlaw nuclear weapons.

Sadly, some speakers reminded us, (to heartfelt cries of "Shime! Shime!"), Australia is not yet one of those enlightened nations. Instead, our dutiful government is choosing to join the nukes-mighty USA in boycotting the negotiations.

You columnist shimmered along to this event not so much because I share the convictions of its organisers the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom and the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (although I do share them) as because I do love a good political rally.

A very special art form (with lots of elements of live theatre) they were such a feature of my hot, political youth.

Today, though, and especially in bourgeois Canberra, political rallies of any kind (let alone refreshingly leftish and pinkish ones like this Ban The Bomb – Finally! event) are almost as scarce as the interventions of Wonder Woman. So I was there not only as a pinko but also as a student of political occasions and of our dear city.

Loyal readers of my jottings will know that I usually enthuse over almost everything. For me the Beaker of Life is almost always three-quarters full rather than a quarter empty. So please forgive me if, just this once, I err on the side of melancholy.

Events always take up some of the character of their surroundings. Ban The Bomb – Finally! took place under gloomy skies of battleship grey. Then, today's inner-Civic is depressingly decaying and dilapidated and feels and looks like a condemned precinct awaiting the wreckers. Any garden beds are choked with weeds and everywhere and everything is so splashed with bird poo that it's as if an enemy has bombarded Civic with bird-poo artillery. Only Wonder Woman can save Civic now.

Even Civic's Australian magpies lack the glossy good looks and playful self-esteem of their suburban brothers and sisters and instead skulk about like feathered rats. Their bodies, plumage and minds are damaged by diets of fast food scraps and by their eternally begging, scavenging, inner-city lifestyles. So used now to fighting over stale crumbs of pizza crust even if liberated and introduced to suburbia's lawns and paddocks they simply wouldn't know how to engage in the lost joy of fossicking for nutritious grubs.

Then, as well as the melancholy setting, there was, worst of all, the rally's heartbreaking subject.

As we were reminded at the occasion there are approximately 15,000 nuclear weapons in the world. Perhaps 1800 toey and throbbing US and Russian nuclear weapons are on high alert, ready to be launched at 15-30 minutes notice. It seems inevitable, unless Wonder Woman intervenes, that our belligerent species will one day resort to nuclear war.

The spectre of the USA's unhinged Commander In Chief hovered among us, deepening our dread of what mad men may one day do with their weapons.

But however futile their campaign how one admired the idealistic optimism and fighting spirit of the singers and speakers at the rally!

A union choir sang us the rousing Aldermaston anthem "Men and women, stand together/Do not heed the men of war/Make your minds now or never/Ban the bomb for evermore."

Dynamic Alex White of Unions ACT demanded of us "Are you going to get out and struggle? Are you fired up? Are you ready to go?"

We all piped up that, yes, Alex, you bet we're all fired up and ready to go. But in my case, later making my way across crumbling, dying Civic on my way to my car, I felt I couldn't remain fired up without Wonder Woman's help.