It rang a bell for how people were perceiving the world, in a particular way that occasionally happens, but is fairly rare.”. I ended up being named director of Aquarius which was the cultural arm of the organisation, and Graeme ended up as festival director. The 1973 Aquarius Festival was a ten day music, art and cultural gathering of like-minded people who were at the forefront of the counterculture and alternative lifestyles movement in Australia. The Festival changed the small country town and the surrounding region forever. Write CSS OR LESS and hit save. He chuckled and replied, “Yes I suppose I did, with the naivety of youth. The majority of … The kinda true story of a DJ held at gunpoint and made to play nothing but The Smiths. The 1973 Aquarius Festival was produced by the Australia Union of Students and it was a peak expression of the creative cultural ferment which arose with the anti-war, anti-conscription, student activism of the late 1960s and early l970s. Due to a slip in soil fertility, among other factors, Nimbin’s core industry was slumping, and the fact that the village was off the traditional tourist routes meant that it was really in a bad state financially. Browse more videos. Australia's equivalent to the Woodstock Festival and the birthplace for Australia's hippie movement. Nimbin Aquarius Festival 1973. The 1970s were a transformative time for northern New South Wales, especially in the regional town of Nimbin. Many of those who came to Nimbin for the festival stayed on in the town afterwards, purchasing cheap land and setting up communal living arrangements on large shared properties. He’d been working in Sydney running the alternative music venue, The Arts Factory, and remembers fondly the weekends that they used to shut the venue and invite the regulars to open farm festivals, where they spent the weekend listening to local bands and having a ball. A salient feature of the festival, both at the time and in recollection, was its incorporation of Aboriginal culture. Please see Wikipedia's template documentation for further citation fields that may be required. Please see Wikipedia's template documentation for further citation fields that may be required. “We’d have a dialogue in each city,” explains Johnny. Wikipedia Citation. With upwards of 90% of the Barrier Reef bleached and effectively destroyed, and the councils of New South Wales being involuntarily merged in order to eradicate elected resistance to Coal Seam Gas drilling, perhaps we need the Aquarius movement more than ever. The Library has recently acquired original artwork by Indigenous artist Bronwyn Bancroft for her children’s book Kangaro, On Thursday 26 October, staff from the State Library of NSW traveled to Nimbin for a special event being held in partner, Please read our special conditions of entry before visiting us. Unlike the current climate in Australia, where you get fined for picking your nose and can barely walk out your front door for tripping over red tape, Johnny’s generation was free to explore new ways of doing things. The Archive comprises a wide range of oral histories, photographs, ephemera and papers documenting the Aquarius Festival, its lasting impact, and the motivations of the participants. ‍ A 10-day ‘festival without a program’ was proposed where people lived in ‘an experiential community’, built their dwellings and lived in tribes. “We were almost ready to give up and resort to going back to a university campus,” he remembers. That, including long term opposition to the Vietnam War; very much a background of student politics, and the student worker movement.” I asked Johnny whether he felt disconnected from his parents’ generation. The festival did not advertise through mainstream media and relied on word of mouth for its promotion. The 1973 Aquarius Festival has since been the Holy Grail, the pin point in time when alternative folk gathered to celebrate their new rural community life in this exotic subtropical village. But it’s interesting that of all the things I’ve been involved in over the years, the one thing that still pops up, quite regularly, and still survives in many ways, is Nimbin. The Nimbin Aquarius Festival of 1973 marked a watershed in Australian popular history. The fourth and last was held in Ni… The Aquarius Legacy Excerpt from "Nimbin & Environs, 1996 " by Mousetrap Media. The Aquarius Festival aimed to celebrate alternative thinking and sustainable lifestyles. Free for reuse - unless otherwise stated, this content is licensed under  Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. The fourth and last was held in Nimbin, New South Wales in 1973. I think it’s natural to think that you always know better when you’re young, but as I get older I realise that things tend to go in circles.”. He chuckles, and replies that it inescapably is. Communes like the Tuntable Falls community, are still there today. A scene from the first Aquarius Festival in Nimbin, 1973. Hair was long, and times were radical, in every sense of the word. “Aquarius didn’t cause it, but it accentuated it. Flickr/Harry Watson Smith, CC BY-SA. And then we’d do it all again.”. Many religious groups, such as the Krishna Consciousness Movement, attended the festival and held ceremonies. Do you remember Nimbin Aquarius Festival 1973? Sun 30 Jan. 1972 Rock church Service with music by Adelaide bands Buffalo Drive and Earth, from the Rock musical "Manchild" Goblins band Gerry's Jugband The interviewees speak of not only the excitement of creating a new life but also the difficulties and frustrations of communal living. “Graeme Dunstan and I both knew each other from Sydney,” remembers Johnny. early 1970s, but the Nimbin Aquarius Festival of 1973 undoubtedly had a bigger and more lasting impact than any of the commercial rock festivals of the period, even though it was relatively small compared to Sunbury. In the 1960s, the local dairy industry collapsed due to recession and Nimbin went into serious economic decline until 1973, when the Aquarius Festival, a large gathering of university students, practitioners of alternative lifestyles, hippies, and party people, was held in the village. “I’m worried for the people who write these things and about what they fear from the festival, and why they feel that they have to put it down,” he told the ABC in 1973. You are free to copy, distribute, remix and build upon this content as long as you credit the author and the State Library of NSW as the source. commonplace at festivals at the time (although Aquarius certainly had all of those things). View our most recent social media posts “I’ve had a bit of a mixed bag career-wise,” he tells me, “and there’s lots of things that I’ve done since then. The 1973 Aquarius Festival was a ten day music, art and cultural gathering of like-minded people who were at the forefront of the counterculture and alternative lifestyles movement in Australia. Nimbin… So it was very much radical in its form, as well as its ideals. I had come to Australia to see if there was any kind of counterculture here at all... ... you know we're all artists, and in some way or another the true art is life. Rare colour film footage of Australia's Nimbin Aquarius Festival, the historic event organized by the Australian Union of Students in 1973. In an effort to capture this period of Australian history, the Library acquired the extensive Rainbow Archive between 1988 and 1996. The Nimbin Aquarius Festival was a counter-cultural arts and music festival organised by the Australian Union of Students.It was the fourth in a biannual series of festivals, first organised by the National Union of Australian University Students (NUAUS). The White Company, an experimental musical theatre group, were among the performers at the 1973 Aquarius Festival, who also toured the country to promote the festival. “Nothing was programmed,” he tells me. And we slowly accumulated several hundred people who liked the idea and were tuned into it and committed and they helped us put on the festival, it sort of went from there.”. This is because Aquarius Geoffroy Alf. Here is the festival revival guide of Nimbin Aquarius Festival 1973 in Nimbin, Australia. And it was this thirst for something fresh that led him to Aquarius. For suggested attribution, see our copyright page. Inside you will also find some of the original murals painted at the Nimbin Aquarius Festival in 1973, one for each sign of the zodiac.