IN DEFENCE OF NIMBIN

I have been to Nimbin three times. On the first occasion I was just out of school, a young hippie, swept along in the hope and euphoria of the early Seventies. I arrived in the town with three cosmic colleagues as the Aquarius Festival was about to start.  We had all walked through the night from Murwullimbah, some fifty kilometres way. We were tough back then. 

There was Confucious, a smiling dark skinned short boy we all assumed was Tibetan. He made no attempt to disabuse us because the truth, that he was a Maltese lad from Melbourne, would have earned far less spiritual kudos. The second was Greg who made a terrible mistake in accepting a lift from a police car over the last part of the journey. Alighting from the cop car with a brand new kaftan meant he was viewed as a "nark" or police informant. He was nothing of the sort of course. The last was an intense English Christian traveler who really was on a deep spiritual journey. For a start he didn't take drugs. Our little party faced a tornado of drugs, radical philosophies and the interminable pressure of trying to look 'spiritual'. That was especially hard for me because I wasn't, not even remotely.

The Nimbin Aquarius Festival was an attempt to transform both the self and the society. It was a place of often misguided, often deluded and mostly drug-induced searching, but at its heart, a place of integrity none the less. 

My second journey to Nimbin was horrible, the town centre full of drug pushers. Within a few minutes I was offered heroin, speed and all the other chemicals so alien to the concept of naturally grown weed. I couldn't get out of town fast enough, saddened by what I saw as the terrible failure of the hippie dream.

My recent visit was enlightening. I was here to tell a story and felt duty bound to hear from the locals. Even before I did a number of things struck me. After traveling through an outback New South Wales devastated by drought, globalization and mining, Nimbin was buzzing, the desperation of the small towns I had visited replaced by swirling colour, enterprise and movement.

I parked the 'Swagmobile' opposite the local skate rink. About twelve young boys were skating and amongst them was a young dwarf. He exuded a complete lack of self-consciousness. In fact he was the best skater of the lot. It became a metaphor for the inclusiveness of the town.

Walking into the town centre I was then struck by the number of Aboriginals who sat side by side with the locals. I have come from many years in Alice Springs where the combined efforts of highly paid white bureaucrats has created an apartheid, no other word for it. Here the local Aboriginals are welcomed, respected and consulted. 

Old people, white or black, aren't shunted to homes, they sit in the cafes and they have names that are known and shouted out by young people who walk past. Dogs and cats have names too. They lie in the street and force people to go around them, which because no one is in a hurry is cool, and because no one is in a hurry people sit under trees and talk for hours. Conversation between human beings is everywhere.

Fast food doesn't exist in its branded forms. It is such a relief to the eye. Instead of working in 'Maccas', the children of hippies serve food in bakeries and The Emporium which are in the town rather than on its perimeter. They are really nice kids, their pleasantries are welcoming without the formularised "have a nice day". There is no corporate rubbish discarded in the streets. Cafe signage advertises nutrients not taste. Food plays an enormous role in Nimbin and it should be grown organically and with love.

In conversation, of which I had many over the week, words like 'sacred' are held as ends in themselves. 'Sacred' lives at the other end of 'The Bottom Line'. Many locals feared the coming of the 'real estate' dreaming that has engulfed Bryon Bay and Bangalow. So far they have been spared but I wonder for how long. In conversation I also encountered honest assessments of where the hippie dream had failed. In the early days there had been an attempt to redefine ownership of land as a communal resource but it had floundered on the rocks of greed and self-interest. The hippies from that time viewed that era as a failure and took responsibility.

To my sad experience on my second trip it seems there is an explanation. Criminals and patients released from mental institutions were basically given a free pass to Nimbin. Suddenly hippies had to absorb people rejected by society. It was a horror period as speed, ice and heroin overtook the culture. Gradually the heroin dealers have been 'escorted' from the town by local elders while people with mental issues have sometimes been loved back to a kind of health. They have been restored to health by a culture of acceptance and love, rather than of individual thereapy. That to me speaks of a healthy community.

As I sat behind the Rainbow Cafe, Michael Baulderstone, the intelligent and welcoming unofficial mayor of Nimbin, pointed to an Aboriginal who was building a 'cubby house' for kids. Michael explained that he was from Palm Island, a notorious place of horror for Aboriginal people. All his family were dead from the grog, from murder or drugs. He clearly had mental issues but he was welcome to stay here. He had found a place in the town and old hippies talked encouragingly to him. Michael made the point that blackfellas on good weed were placid and relaxed rather than drunkenly violent. The local cop made the same point. He had just re-signed for another term because "I don't want to spend my working life locking up drunks". Interesting. 

I challenged Michael on the dangers of marihuana. I have seen so many people, young and old, destroyed by super strong grass. His point was that hydroponically grown marijuana is just mass produced, profit-driven, chemically altered shit. The hippie philosophy, in its purest form, abhors the stuff. They see pure weed as a miracle drug. 

I loved Nimbin in this present incarnation. It was vibrant and soulful. The hippies strike a balance between street-smart and naive. They are no pushovers either. They have just beaten off a coal seam gas project with bloody-minded determination. Over months they stood blockade together with local farmers. The hippies of Nimbin learned their protesting skills working against loggers and they don't mind living in the dirt for months on end. Dirt ain't dirty to these guys. It is the EARTH!

Many locals are on welfare but everywhere voluntary workers dig community gardens, make sculptures and work in the local radio station, one of the best in Australia. NIM-FM blares out over the street-scape giving continuity and community to the town. The great danger still lies in the drug 'ice' [cheap synthesized speed], sold on the streets. But is sold everywhere in Australia. Forget 'boat people' and 'terrorists', 'ice' is the truly worrying threat to this country. It is wreaking havoc across rural Australia.

I left Nimbin with a feeling I was leaving 'home'. When I go back I'll feel like I am returning home. When I pass another country town decimated by fast food outlets, Coles, Woolworths and mining, with boarded up shops and empty faces, I'll think of the crazy, vibrant place lying peacefully in the Nimbin Valley. Ultimately Nimbin stands for another way of living life and for that alone it should be praised.

And I hope those old friends - Confucious, Greg and the English Christian - found some peace on their journey.

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