Location:
Nimbin, NSW
Dates:
12-23 May 1973
Organisers:
Graeme Dunstan, Johnny Allen, Benny Zable
(Australian Union of Students)
5000
| MILESAGO:Australasian Music & Popular Culture 1964-1975 | MusicFestivals |
AQUARIUS FESTIVAL, NIMBIN, 1973
Location: Dates: Organisers: 5000 | |
History
Discussions of Sunbury often make high-flying claims aboutitssignificance to youth culture and the emerging counter-culture oftheearly 1970s, but the Nimbin Aquarius Festival of 1973 undoubtedlyhad a bigger and more lasting impact than any ofthe commercial rock festivals of the period, even though itwas relatively small compared to Sunbury. This is because Aquariuswas abroadly-based conceptual event, held to explore and celebratealternative lifestyles, and because it mixed music with other arts andcrafts, rather than simply presenting an extended concertfestival where patrons sat around drinking beer, smoking dope andwatching bands. The decision tohold the Aquarius festival in the northern NSW village of Nimbinhas alsohad a major effect on the subsequent history of that region.
Nimbin is located in the beautiful and lush temperaterainforest region of north-eastern New South Wales, 30km south ofLismore. The beautiful Nightcap Range, immediately north of the village, is aWorld Heritage-listed National Park. Nimbin was first settled in 1882, but the rainforests inthe area had been extensively exploited for timber from the 1840sonwards. The cleared land was later turned into pasture and dairyingwas the area's main industry until Norco, the regional diary processingcooperative, closed its butter factory in 1950. This combined with theloss of primary produce exports after Britain joined the EEC in theSixties and the reduction of tariffs in the Seventies, which devastatedAustralia's primary sector. from the Fifties to the Seventies about 300local dairy farms closed and the local population dwindled.
Today, around 10,000 live in the area, but by the early'70s Nimbin itself was virtually a ghost town.The revitalisation of the area began with the arrival in late 1972of a group of student union organisers who werelooking for a site for a major counter-cultural lifestyle festival.Apart from its idyllic location, a major attraction of Nimbin for thefestival's main organisers, Graeme Dunstan, Johnny Allen and Benny Zable,was the fact that they would be able to "recycle" the many vacantbuildings in and around the town. Many of the local buildings weredecorated with murals; several of these were painted by renownedvisionary artistVernon Treweeke, who was the subject ofa 'comeback' exhibition at Penrith Regional Gallery in 2003,held in conjunctionwith an exhibition of photographs by noted Melbourne photographerDavid Porter(aka "Jaques L'Affrique").
Several of the people behind Aquaruis '73 had been involved in and inspired by theAquarius Festival of University Arts, organised by the Australian Union of Students and held at ANU in Canberra in 1971. Aquarius co-director Graeme Dunstan was an alumnus ofDuntroon Military College and a graduate of the University of NSW.Graeme became the President of the UNSW Labor Club in 1966 and wasactive in organising the beginnings of the anti Vietnam war andanti-conscription movement on that campus. He organised the LBJ WelcomeCommittee which stopped US President Lyndon B. Johnson's motorcade inLiverpool Street, Sydney -- Graeme was actually one of those underLBJ's car whenPremier Askin gave his infamous order to "run over thebastards". In 1967 Graeme was elected President of the UNSWStudent's Union and co-editor of Tharunkawith Mark Lyons. In 1970 he was Director of Student Publications forthe UNSW Students Union when Wendy Bacon and her Tharunkaco-editorsused the magazine to challenge the censorship laws. In 1971 Dunstanagain became co-editor ofTharunka with Rob Andrewsand Michael Lucetti.
In May 1973 students, artists, musicians and other youngpeople from all over Australia gathered in Nimbin for the Festival, whichran for ten days from 12 May to 23 May. During this time, festival-goers (estimatesrange from 5,000 to 10,000) took part in workshops and discussions,swam and walked around in the nude, smoked dope, listened to music, andtalked about new social experiments. Most were students from the majorcampuses in Sydney, Brisbane, Canberra and Melbourne.
Available information on the music presented at the festival issketchy, but among the musicians known to have been involved in theFestival were:
At the end of the festival, a meeting was held todiscuss an on-going commitment to the spirit of the festival. Thisresulted in the "May Manifesto" which contained many of the ideals andprinciples still espoused by the Nimbin community. It spoke of a"concentration of arts and artists", "survival on earth", "selfsufficiency" on a "tribal basis", "living in harmony with the naturalenvironment ", "participation rather than consumer entertainment", "nopre-arranged program of events" and "re-discovering the meaning thatagricultural fairs once had for country people".
The Festival and the May Manifesto eventually led to theformation of the well-known Tuntable Falls Community, still the largestcommune in the area. As well as those who stayed on after the festival,others attracted to an alternative lifestyle eventually moved to thearea, either buying land, joining existing communes or forming newones. Other communes and cooperatives subsequently formed in theimmediate vicinity of Nimbin or in adjacent valleys -- Billen Cliffs,Moondani, Blue Springs, Bodhi Farm, and Siddha Farm -- and from themid-Seventies onwards, Nimbin became increasingly identified as acentre for the counterculture and the environmental and sustainablelifestyle movements in Australia.
For better or worse, recreational drugs became a focus ofpublic attention. In the years after theFestival, Nimbin became a havenfor those seeking to establish alternative lifestyles or simply wantingto "drop out"; they brought marijuana and LSD into the area, andmany of those who settled there began growing dope, which thrived inthe hot, humid north coast climate. The presence of seasonal nativehallucinogenicmushrooms in the fields and forests of the north coast was an addedattraction, and the use of these drugs became an integral part of theNimbincommunity experience.
The area became famous for the ready availability ofdope, thanks to the residents' easy-going attitude to its cultivationand use. It was sold and used openly on the streets of the town, andvisiting buyers often did not even leaving their cars when 'scoring'. TheAquarian renewal of the village, its gentle pace, and the lush beautyof the Nimbin area made it a tourist attraction, but the presence ofabundant dope and regular passing trade also acted as a magnetto others with little or no interest in the social concerns of theAquarius veterans.
From the late Seventies onwards Nimbin's social problemsincreased as curious tourists, transients and drug dealers flocked tothe area. In the late '70s heroin began to appear in large quantitiesin throughout NSW for the first time, and by the early '80s it hadlargely replaced marijuana as the main street drug. As a result, drug-related crime and violence became a growing problem. Thischange was largely driven by alliances forged betweenorganised crime (e.g the so-called "Grriffith Mafia') and corruptelements of the NSW Police. Acting inleague withmajor drug syndicates, detectives and uniformed police actedconcertedly to restrict the cannabis supply by busting dopegrowers, dealers and smokers, while covertly promoting heroin useand dependency byprotectingimporters and dealers and actively participating in importation anddealing.
In 2000, several Nimbin cafes and businesses began selling fixed-pricemarijuana as part of a community attempt to reduce the dealing problem.Street dealing noticeably subsided but the move predictably angered dealers andbricks were hurled through the windows of the Rainbow Cafe, the HempEmbassy, a gift-shop and campaign centre for legalisation activists.Police eventually closed the experiment down with a highly publicisedraids and arrests.
Since 1993 Nimbin has been the venue for the "MardiGrass", an annualprotest/festival held in early May. The event originated with a proteststaged in 1993 in the wake of a major undercover police blitz on thearea -- police surperivisng the protest were pelted with eggs, tomatoes and toilet paper and notsurprisingly the demonstration attracted wide publicity. Motivated bythe injustice and negative consequences for the Nimbin community ofcannabis being illegal, Bob Hopkins called for an organised andpeacefulMay Day Cannabis Law Reform Rally to march up the main street of Nimbin. He dubbed the eventMardiGrass, linking it to the civil rights agenda behind theannual Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras in Sydney.
The original event drew 1000 people, and has been held every yearsince then, attracting ever larger crowds and expanding into a culturalevent that echoes the original Aquarius Festival. While much of themainstream media coverage predictably focusses on arrests andscattered incidents of street violence, the MardiGrass has grownsteadily each year and become an established part of the localcalendar. Lismore Council has tacitly recognised it by approvingthe MardiGrass Development Application (even though they refrainfrom mentioning it in their tourist information) and in 2008Lismore police Area Command praised the efforts of organisers, althoughthis was not reported in the mainstream media.
References / Links
Graeme Dunstan
Echoes of Aquarius
http://www.peacebus.com/Aquarius/AquariusEcho.html
The Aquarius Foundation Inc.
http://www.rainbowregion.com.au/aquarius/
Graeme Dunstan CV
http://www.peacebus.com/graeme/cv.html
Michael Hannan
Musical Practices and Cultural Identity in theVillage of Nimbin
http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/carts/contmusic/mh/nimbinmusic.html
Nimbin Aquarius Festival
http://www.30th-nimbin-aquarius-anniversary.netfirms.com/
Nimbin Info
http://www.nnsw.com.au/nimbin/
Nimbin Online
http://www.nimbin.org/
Nimbin MardiGrass
http://www.hempembassy.net/nimbinmardigrass.com/
YouTube - Nimbin Aquarius Festival 1973
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQokUwK1Ris
silent home movies from the Festival
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