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Michael
Balderstone - Nimbin Museum director
I
came to Nimbin a bit over 15 years ago after hiding in Himalayan
caves and other out of the way places around the planet for a
decade or so. Being an old hippy, I had regularly visited
the tiny village on visits to Australia but wasn't ready to settle
down. It was only after having children that happened and
we traveled the east coast looking for like minded people to live
with. Nimbin seemed to have the biggest mob of black sheep
so we stopped here, renting a house in town. I was keen to do
something, there were plenty of empty shops and I moved into one
setting up a second hand shop mostly stocked from the local tip.
Hippies have good taste, a keen eye, and little money so practical
well made items from the past were popular. Soon I was regularly
attending auctions and farm clearance sales where often historical
pieces of the areas history were sold. A collection started to
grow, a few aboriginal artifacts, lots of early European pioneers
relics and a few hippy bits that hadn't been composted.
After
eight years there was a grand collection hanging from the ceilings
and stuffing the eight rooms the shop had grown into. The business
had always been called the Nimbin Museum and as the unusual village
attracted increasing visitors keen to know how the "hippy
experiment" began, and we got sick of answering the same
questions every day, the idea came to create a walk through educational
history of the area. Several local artists helped and the Rainbow
Serpent Path was born!
No
doubt it reflects my own long, drawn out journey of self discovery
but it's not dissimilar to many of the new settlers in the
area attracted from around the globe to the ideals and visions
of the tribe here.
I
grew up on a sheep and cattle farm in Western Victoria after the
formative years spent on the Murray River near Tocumwal. I was
the eldest of four children who one after the other were sent
off to boarding school in Melbourne at age ten. I hated it, missing
the warmth and security of a loving family and the farm I knew
so well. To survive, I shut down and closed off a whole
emotional side to myself which I rediscovered some twenty years
later.
After
leaving school I went home on the farm for a year, then two years
on a big property before traveling around Australia in an old
Holden Wagon with a mate. Then it was to the bright lights of
the city working for a stock and share broker. All went well for
a while, it was a big party, lots of alcohol, girls and good times,
everything I'd missed out on in my teenage years locked up in
the conservative, traditional military style jail they called
Scotch College. I couldn't get enough of life and was soon restless
for more travel. The stockbroker sent me to their London office.
That was it! Once I'd had a taste of overseas adventure I wanted
to see more, gave notice and upset everyone by declaring there
must be more to life than helping the rich get richer. With friends
we bought an old police van and headed off over land to
India on the famous hippy trail after I'd ceremoniously burnt
my suits and ties! I was twenty five.
Five
months later, bearded, beaded and hair lengthening the caretaker
at the Kandahar campground in Afghanistan attached me to his hubbly-bubbly
which he was regularly smoking from. I thought it was tobacco
and hooked into it. Alas, it was the best black Afghani hash.
I arose from his cubby hole wildly hallucinating and my life has
never been the same since!
It took the
following decade to even begin to understand the experience. Not
to mention, amongst others, that first mushroom trip in Bali which
really tipped me upside down. Lots of travel, thinking and more
drugs took up most of the next chapter before I eventually returned
to Australia, had children and moved to Nimbin.
I live
in a community outside Nimbin now, absolutly love the unique tribe
that exists here keeping the dream alive of living in harmony
with nature, though occasionally a strange thought wanders through
wondering if ignorance really is bliss. Of course it's not.
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