Nimbin

On Monday we have a day trip to Nimbin. After the manufactured, consumer friendly hippydom of Byron Bay Nimbin feels like the real thing. We're lucky enough to have long-time Nimbin resident Alan as our guide for the day & a fine guide he is too. Originally from Streatham, he was working as an accountant in London when he decided he'd had enough of the rat race, cut up his suits & ties with scissors & went on the road. It wasn't too long before he reached Nimbin. That was over twenty years ago & he's been living & working around here ever since.

Although many of our fellow travellers seem to have come to Nimbin just to get blotto on the easily available weed here, there is a lot more to Nimbin than that. Paul & I leave the rest of the mob munching on their hash cookies while Alan takes us on a tour of some of the more interesting things going on in the hills around here.

In 1973 there was an Aquarius festival held in Nimbin & many of the revellers, attracted by the beautiful location & cheap land prices decided to stay on & live the kinds of alternative lifestyles that they were so intersted in. The hills are home to many permaculture innovators & practitioners who have been living communally & virtually self-sufficiently here for many years. The Nimbin hills are also home to the Rainbow Power Company who have been designing & promoting renewable energy sources around the world for over twenty years.

Nimbin gets a bit of a bad run from the press over here because of its lax attitude to drugs which is a shame because that's only a tiny part of what is going on here. It reminds Paul & I of our visit to Auroville in Tamil Nadu. It's so refreshing to see people who want to live their lives in a different way really go for it & make it work for themselves, their families & future generations.