A Day and a Night in Nimbin

When the tourists came in droves to Byron Bay, the hippies had to find a new place to hang out which still had the charm and character of a tiny peaceful community. And that was how Nimbin had been sold to us. Even before we arrived though, I began to wonder how charming and tranquil a place could be when I had seen at least four different companies running day trips from Byron to Nimbin bringing in bus-loads of tourists each and every day. So what we found there was unfortunately not too much of a surprise.

The place now subsists almost entirely on tourism, and their unique selling point is their willingness to sell and promote dope smoking in every way they can find. As we entered the high street we were instantly bombarded with people trying to sell weed, cookies, and chocolates to the stream of tourists flowing past in the street. The Hemp Embassy was filled with relatively little information on hemp, but plenty of extortionately priced natural products and Nimbin memorabilia. It lead through to the Hemp Bar where people drank tea in a suitably dimly lit room and sold their dodgy wares to the tourists. Across the street was the Museum – which documented the history of Nimbin; from the indigenous owners of the land, through the arrival of the hippies and now the reliance on tourists. Most of the 'exhibits' were nothing more than photocopied newspaper articles stuck randomly on the walls of this small converted house, but a few surprise finds amongst the mountains of tat raised a smile, like the original placard for Dr Poppy's Wonder Elixir (with cannabis extract) which was sold as a cure-all not long ago. A few other places were interesting to look around – the apothecary was a small shop with very strong odours coming from the doorway, and a good collection of natural oils and crystals inside if you had money to burn, and there were lots of clothes shops selling the latest trends for the alternative scene at hugely inflated prices. But again, looking hard enough, a few bargains were found. Even another item for me to wear on days where black doesn't feel necessary... however rare those days might be!

But other than the rampant commercialism of the place, there were other things that quickly put me off. The town was superficial. Existing solely because you could go there to buy and smoke drugs on the street. Not that I think there is anything wrong with having a place like that, but I expected – and needed – more to make the place worth visiting. Where were the hippies? The fires? The drum circles? The community? I saw three fights, one of which ended in a local being taken away by three policemen for threatening a shop owner and her customers whilst dozens of other locals shouted abuse from across the street. People were friendly when they thought I would buy their products, but didn't want any more from us than our money. I suspect that the hippies had long ago abandoned the town and now tried to avoid it whenever possible, choosing instead to live in communities out of town.

Unwilling to accept that this highly talked about place is a complete sham, we will try and find one of those communities to stay in when we come back down the coast, but our night in Nimbin was still ahead of us and we hoped something would happen after dusk that would renew some of the implied appeal of the place. We went to the solitary pub on the main street, below one of the hostels, and waited. Dinner time came around, and the feast we had placed before us was excellent! But still the pub was nearly empty. When talking to the locals, it seemed that nothing ever happened at night. They were out during the day harassing tourists, but just sat at home in the evenings waiting for tomorrow to come. So we decided not to sleep in our van down the road and instead to go looking for something that might be happening a little way out of town.

We headed for the two main hostels in Nimbin down a very dark road. In fact, when the moon disappeared behind the clouds it was pitch black and with only the sounds of the animals in the bush at the edge of the road to help us determine our direction, we tentatively walked on. It seemed like a long way. In fact, after 10 minutes of stumbling on in darkness, across bridges and round sweeping bends which we hoped were part of the road and not someone's driveway, we decided to return to the van and get a torch (and people wonder why it's called 'dope'!) We could have walked right past the hostels and never known. When we returned from the van we found out that was exactly what we had done. It looked like we had only gone twenty meters further than the entrance to the hostel, but we had definitely strolled past without noticing it at all.

But it was a fantastic hostel! Called the Rainbow Village, it was similarly set up to the Arts Factory but with far less coordination. There were old VW camper vans converted into dorms, old gypsy wagons, tree-houses, and teepees. We sat around a fire in a teepee and played cards whilst listening to the bats flying around outside; and when morning came and we could get a good look at the place, it really did have a feel of a commune about it. Beautiful surroundings, with higgledy piggledy structures dotted amongst the trees and a couple of bearded backpackers sat around a camp fire discussing the world's problems. But until we found the real communes – we were going to leave Nimbin and head back to Byron for another night. Even with the commercialisation of the town, Byron still had a far superior air of relaxed acceptance and laid back people. And plenty of choices of pubs to go to and people to talk with!