Fifty years after thousands of hippies converged on the sleepy town of Nimbin, their environmental legacy lives on.
Words Stephen Wyatt
NIMBIN was on its knees. The hospital had closed, shops had emptied. The local industries – dairy, timber and bananas – had collapsed. There was an exodus of residents from the town, 65 kilometres west of Byron Bay. It was on its way out.
Then, suddenly, in May 1973, bust turned to boom. Five thousand hippies arrived in the conservative rural town for the Aquarius Festival, a 10-day event organised by the Australian Union of Students.
