WELCOME TO NIMBIN AQUARIUS ARTS FESTIVAL.
YOU ARE THE FESTIVAL!
It sounded amazing.
Back in Sydney, we were introduced to Johnny Allen and Graheme Dunstan, heads of NSW Universities Students Union, who had received a Grant to organize an Arts Festival, 'The Aquarius Festival', to draw together different faculties from Australia's Universities to share and celebrate alternative thinking and sustainable lifestyles. It was to be a ten-day event. A living ‘ lifestyle’ Festival with bands and entertainers from local and overseas, and a series of workshops where skills and creativity were fostered and exchanged!
They had scoured the countryside for a venue and discovered a small town in Northern New South Wales, in the mountains behind Byron Bay, called Nimbin, which had become almost a ghost town as the bottom had fallen out of the dairy industry it was dependent on. They were able to get leases on empty shops and a lot of acreage around the town.
We decided to have a look.
We pulled into town, the festival was still a month or so away, but excited and inspired by the potential of what we saw, we decided to stay. There was a small crew of university organisers and volunteers. Again, I found a deserted farm-house, found the owner and made my well-rehearsed proposal, of caretaking, made ourselves at home, and went to work helping prepare for the festival. The location was very interesting, 'Nimbin Rocks' were the main natural feature overlooking the town, said by the aboriginals to be exceptionally powerful energy...and felt it!
The Festival headquarters were set up in one building and another as a cafe and food distribution center.
We were given rations of food for our 'services', a cashless transaction!
Tents started popping up throughout the fields...just like mushrooms, and a few domes loosely inspired by Buckminster Fuller as people were naturally self-organizing.
The engineering facility was designing and installing sanitation, the schools of social work were finding premises and designing instant courses, a restaurant was further established to feed the workers and eventually the festival-goers. The food co-op was established to sell bulk health food and to distribute food as payment to those working on the festival.
The official 'Festival Artist', Vernon Treweeke, an Australian who had been successful as a contemporary artist in England, arrived and immediately set about transforming the buildings. A giant rainbow appeared above the 'restaurant', and it became the Rainbow Cafe. A giant Union Jack appeared on the face of the headquarters office.
The fields began to fill with the sounds of guitars and flutes, and an assortment of exotic instruments and voices.
Paul Joseph, another of the festival organisers, created “The White Company,” a troupe of traveling gypsy musicians who ‘toured’ on the back of a truck promoting the festival and would later be an integral part of the festival's performances.
Early in the mornings, Paul would stroll through the fields with a small group of musicians strumming his guitar and singing, and he helped create a beautiful context for the day with an air of magic and happiness.
The Bauls of Bengal, a group of wandering 'Indian Minstrals' who roamed India singing and playing beautiful devotional music, arrived and were soon also wandering the fields, uplifting everyone within earshot. Such was their level of proficiency, their leader 'Purna Das' was known as the Pearl of India, recognised as a national treasure, and was even featured on Bob Dylan's John Wesley Harding album (wearing a triangular hat).
Phillipe Petite was an incredible French mime and high-wire artist, who had not long before completed a high-wire walk between the spires of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, and not long after would gain further fame for his high-wire walk between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. Phillipe provided spontaneous entertainment, tight-rope-walked across town, juggled firesticks, and unicycled his way around the streets.
Dollar Brand a brilliant South African Jazz Musician and aside from concerts, had his piano taken into the fields for impromptu performances
"The Father of Australian Psychedelic Art"
My brief experience in advertising became useful again.
Assorted eccentric and electric rockers added to the ethereal soft music that floated from the creeks from early in the morning.
From the sublime to the ridiculous could be part of various happenings during the day, all at the same time.’
Krishna Consciousness, Divine Light Players, Children of God, Siva Kalpa, and even weirder religions performed services, satsangs and ceremonies, and musical offerings.
The whole town burst into hysterics as the Hare Krishnas ‘danced’ through town chanting
“Hare Rama, Hare Krishna, Rama Rama, Hare ,Hare”
while from the other end of town, an alternative group the ''Harry Gumboots’ pranced with a gumboot on a stick chanting’
"Harry Gumboot, Harry Gumboot, Harry, Harry!"
The media department from the University had yet to arrive, so I produced the first edition of the planned newspaper to share what was happening. Suitably named “Nimbin Good Times”, a good time was had putting it together. I encouraged writers to generate material, along with artists to add illustrations.
I was also helping artists have their art printed as posters. Some fantastic talent passed through. It was bliss working creatively together, like a free-flowing alternative creative department.
One series of posters I helped post-produce for Vernon was a fantastic illustration of a local farmer standing on top of a hill, on the next poster the hill had sprouted mushrooms, his work-pants had morphed into bell-bottom jeans, his hat had sprouted feathers and on the final of the sequence he had started “vibrating” with his heart expanded and full of love.
My contribution was to have them printed as a ‘two-color run’, the second color plate had no image, so I had them spread several lines of colors so when the posters were printed, there was a rainbow behind our newly turned-on hippy farmer.
When the sequence was hung on a wall, a rainbow spread across the room with him undergoing his psychedelic transformation, often having the same influence on the room!.
Let the Good Times roll
INTRODUCED TO VIDEO BY A
GREAT GROUP OF NUTTERS
Bush Video was to fire more inspiration.
Video was just starting to become accessible in portable semi-professional forms, 'Bush Video' was a "video co-operative" invited to experiment in providing a day-to-day video news service, and to document the festival.
When I started doing some work with them, it was love at first squeeze of the record button, seeing the potential of storytelling, and I tried to absorb as much as possible about video.
On one memorable occasion, they tracked down the song man of the original Aboriginal tribe of the area, and we went to visit him.
He was sprightly but quite sick, a genuine gentleman sitting up in bed in his striped pyjamas with a jaunty cap on.
He came to life as he began to sing the songs of his territory, and a beautiful light came from his eyes as he was transported to his Dreaming, taking us with him.