Nimbin & The Magic Bus

I don't care if I wasn't alive in 1969, I have officially seen Woodstock. There's an unbelievably strange little town quietly existing in New South Whales at the base of "mystical" Mt. Warning. Although it is tiny in size, the town of Nimbin has managed to attract every form of an Earth Mother, hippie, "hortaculturalist," burnt out artist, anarchist, creative expressionist, alternative lifestyle practitioner, tree hugger, and all around peace-loving human beings on the planet to this one street town. This tiny enigma of a settlement has it's roots in alternative lifestyle advocates as it's rise to popularity began in '73 when it hosted the Aquarius Festival which was described to me as "a mini Woodstock." I think you see where I'm going with the descriptions of this town, and can at this point reach some accurate conclusions of your own. A recent blog on Lonely Planet had Nimbin ranked within the top 20 places to visit in Australia, purely because there are so few places in the world that come close to it in character, making it definitely worth a visit. Fortunately for me, Bond organizes a trip that runs once a semester with a shuttle down to Nimbin...but not just any shuttle; a Magic Bus - the Magic Bus. The Magic bus is a completely revamped double decker tour bus, painted entirely with flowers and fittingly psychedelic colors on the outside as well as the inside. As if the paint job was not enough to turn heads, the bus also blasts reggae and other similar sounding music throughout it's entire journey announcing it's arrival into whichever lucky town it may pass through. You know you're causing a scene when even the cows stop eating, look up, and stare with an even more dumbfounded look than usual on their faces as the bus crawls by them.

So anyway, I obviously careened some friends to take this trip with me, and our day started at 8:30am with our first encounter with the Magic Bus, not to be confused with the Magic School Bus as there was no Miss Frizzle on this vehicle, that's for sure. Diane, Molly, Angie, Jane, Lacy and I were amongst a group of around 15 other Bond students who had signed up for this Magic Bus journey, not really knowing what the day was going to be like, or further, what Nimbin was going to be like. The bus pulled up to campus already pumping music and seemingly ready to go, and all we could do was laugh. What else do you do when you're about to spend a day on a  massive psychedelic double decker tour bus with two gears at best? Adding to the entire image of the bus, was the "pilot" of the bus who could not have been more fitting for his task of driving a crazy looking bus probably filled with crazy people to an even crazier town, populated be the craziest of all crazy people. He was the type of guy who at 32 years old, had no career, but probably held more jobs than he knew what to do with at one time. His hair was pulled back into a pony tail, he had a necklace with some rock symbol thing, a dirty button down with cargo shorts and a seriously unkempt beard. What he did have, however, was a pretty quick wit and some offbeat comments that were far more entertaining than he originally intended. So we scrambled on the bus and up to the second level and settled in for our reggae filled ride down to New South Whales. The best part of the ride was watching the reaction of people on the streets as we passed them. I saw one woman drop her groceries and shield her child's eyes, amongst the strange combination of confused and jealously delighted stares that we got as the Magic Bus rolled through various towns. It was better than any in-flight entertainment I've experienced.

Two hours later we pulled into Nimbin and began our exploration of the town that wouldn't last a day in the United States. There was one police station located at the very edge of town tucked behind a few big trees - it was boarded up and totally deserted. After happening across this, the microcosm of a town seemed to make a lot more sense. There was simply no police presence at all within miles of the town, and this became even more apparent as we wandered the one street of the little town. Our jaws were practically hanging open as we walked and almost everything that we saw was well worth laughing over. There were shops called "Happy High Herbs," the "Hemp Emporium," and "Bringabong," to point out a few highlights of Nimbin style creativity. Due to the very clear commonality that runs through the veins of the town, every person on the street or shopkeeper who we spoke to was blindingly friendly and bubbly, making the experience as a whole even more fun because people were easy to talk to. One man I spoke to came to Nimbin for a visit when he was 22 years old, and simply did not go home. There were men clearly in their later years (much later years) hanging around the streets with dreadlocks and all sorts of earthy looking jewelry chatting with anyone who would chat back at them, and women with fortune telling devices and dread lock sporting children everywhere. It was honestly like walking down the set of a Hollywood film - places like this aren't supposed to actually exist in the real world, but it's somewhat comforting to know that they do. It's nice to know that true creativity and places that aren't totally tuned in with the pulse of the world and regional politics still exist, even if they exist in pockets. I was pleasantly surprised by the local art museum that we wandered into as well. There were a lot of works on canvases that appeared at first glance to be typically Aboriginal in their characteristics, but each one had a pair of 3D glasses next to them. The common looking Aboriginal art was immediately hippie art upon closer examination with the help of the 3D glasses. It was a pretty cool fusion of cultural art with a Nimbin twist. So anyway, we killed about an hour and a half just wandering in and out of strange little shops selling even stranger things, all of which was pretty cool to see and totally worth the long southern haul.

Our next stop on the Magic Bus ride was the Sphinx Cafe, where we stopped briefly for lunch before continuing down the road towards a local swimming hole. Upon arrival, the Magic Bus puttered to a halt and we hopped out and headed down towards the river. The river was a murky green and was apparently infested with platypus. I'd take a platypus infested river any day over a crocodile one. That being said, it definitely looked like prime snake/crocodile/leech/snapping turtle/loch ness monster conditions, especially being that you couldn't see anywhere close to the bottom - something that Molly would have no part of and I don't blame her for choosing life. While the six of us lined the river weighing our options, I glanced behind us. The rest of the Bond students were all lounging around in the sun, clearly devoid of any and all ambition to take a plunge into the questionable river. I made up my mind however, and headed into the great unknown to make my way across the river to the rope swing on the other side. I looked back one more time at the semi-conscious group of other Bond students, all of whom were dead asleep by now, with the pilot of the Magic Bus walking amongst them asking, "Anyone dangling on the edge of reality?" Three hands went up. Clearly, they had done a fairly extensive job of embracing the Nimbin "culture." By now, Lacy and I were about waist deep and hadn't been attacked by anything yet so Diane deemed the odds of survival to be favorable and followed us into the alarmingly cold green water. We forged the river, Oregon Trail style and spent the next 45 minutes or so swinging out over the river on the make shift rope swing and then crashing down to the water like a ton of bricks in the least graceful manner possible - over, and over again. I guess I can cross trapeze artist off of my list of possible career paths, it's just not in the cards for me, as sad as it is.

After the swimming extravaganza, it was back to the Magic Bus to head north. On the way, he had a great view of  the ever so "mystical" Mt. Warning, and a lot of Australian farms until we were back in Queensland. I think it's safe to assume that these farms are less than productive. They all looked particularly sun scorched and seemed to be entirely free of human beings...just cows. They were some happy looking cows though. Not exactly Papen farms if you ask me! Anyway, from here the Magic Bus continued its homeward bound journey and we were back in our buildings by around 6:30pm, exhausted and a little in shock that we had really just witnessed everything we saw that day. I'm definitely glad we made the trip, it was wonderfully bizarre in every way possible and I know I'll never forget the town that just doesn't care about the outside world.