Nimbin. Probably some of the best people watching on Earth. An entire town, in the middle of Australia, totally devoted to drugs. Still stuck in the past, when the town hosted the last ever 1973 Aquarius Festival, locals live to keep that hippie culture alive.
The town is just an hour and a half from Brisbane by bus, and although this place is beyond strange, I’m glad I made the trek. The old Nimbin museum is a house turned art gallery on acid. The walls, doors and floors have been painted with floral designs, covered in newspaper clippings and scrawled in mantras that only the stoned could make up. Broken down cars lie about, and banana leaves with Ghandi quotes hang off the strange decor. Yup, the Nimbin museum is one of a kind.
From there I walked up and down the streets, checking out the stores and cafe’s along the way. Herbal teas, palm readings, incense… It’s a hippie dream here! I have never in my life seen more dreadlocks and tie dye in 2 squared blocks.
The town is, however, very small. Not a lot of things to do in the hours that I had before my bus this afternoon. Then I realized, all I wanted to do was sit and have a coffee and watch the strangeness around me. So I did.
Pretty much anything goes here as far as people. The outfits, the age groups, the rooster crowing in a garden bed behind me. There is a strangely hypnotic trance beat mixed with a didgeridoo emanating from the “happy high herbs” shop next to me. I’ve heard the word “groovy” three times in the last five minutes. Rainbow seems to be the favourite colour to wear here. I saw a woman with a leather vest that said “classy gal” in giant stitched lettering in the back and then immediately after saw an old lady, in head to toe purple, jump for joy when she found a dead sunflower. She broke the sun flower in half and started eating the seeds… The same sunflower I saw two chickens eating only moments earlier. Yup, this place is weird.
Although, according to the Nimbin museum, the word “weird” comes from the Germanic word “weirden” which means “to become”. So there’s your English lesson for the day. Who knew I would learn so much!