Getting the 280km to Nimbin only took me two cars and the second one was an ozzie named Bruce that was heading to Nimbin to live with his brother & Co. When I arrived in Nimbin I couldn’t get a hold of my Woofer host so Bruce offered me to stay at their place for the night, so once again I got fed and free accommodation. The following day I got a hold of my host Gloria and went to her place to stay for a week.
Nimbin used to be another ghost town until 1973
when a bunch of students and similar minded people decided they would hold their Aquarius Festival there. This was during the flower power era and they all loved Nimbin and the surrounding area so much that a lot of them decided to stay there and start a bunch of communities and build there own houses and such. So it became Woodstock’s sister town in Australia filled with people embracing alternative lifestyles.
Nimbin basically only has one street and not a lot of people live in the actual town, but it’s a very busy town with 3 backpacker’s hostels and buses coming there every day. Also all the lovely old hippies with their long hair roam the streets as well as the newer Nimbians trying to rip of all the tourists or just being junkies. In the stores they sell pipes, hemp clothes and similar stuff and you can hardly get out of your car before some young dude comes up to you and ask if you want to buy some marijuana. The town also has a lot of cafes, one pub and one hempbar, all in which people sit smoking their weed openly.
Gloria lives in one of the oldest communities,
Tuntable Falls which also is one of the biggest in Australia with about 300 occupants, the community was a bit different then the tight knit sharing communities that I imagined but I reckon there’s 3 reasons to that. First its way to large with 2000 hectares, secondly they have too many members so its take away the personal feeling of knowing everyone. And last but not least the community was created 35 years ago so think the original idea and spirit is all gone from the old people living there and the young are just too few and don’t have the same spirit anymore.
Gloria lives in a beautiful little house just at the edge of the rainforest on the steep rise of a mountain, lots of birds around and tons of little lizards running around. Also spotted a cute little wallaby in the garden as well as a bush turkey. And inside Glorias house (I slept in another further down) she had a nice 15cm across little “house pet” to take of the flies, I’m glad I didn’t sleep there!
Only staying here for 6 days, been doing some brush cutting, wood chopping, avocado and tamarillo harvesting during these days, but just a few hours a day.
I also tried a bush tucker vegetable named Taro raw, which we found out afterwards was poisonous when eaten raw so that wasn’t a to pleasant experience having my throat swell up and chest hurting and having no idea why. Although the taro tasted very nice when cooked!
Tomorrow I’m off to Byron Bay.
No comments:
Post a Comment