“A theme park on an acid trip,” an fairly accurate analogy provided by the Lonely planet to describe Australia’s hippy heaven and dope smoking capital, Nimbin.

On recommendation from other travellers I’d chosen to experience this special part of Australia on an organised trip with ‘Jim’s Alternative Tours’. Slightly apprehensive I set off accompanied by a group of people whose sole intention for the day was to get to Nimbin, score some marijuana and make it back to Byron Bay without tripping out on the bus on the way home!

This unusual day trip, to a part of Australia where marijuana smoking isn’t legal but is ignored by local police, was played out against a backdrop of tunes hand picked by tour operator Jim to suit each step of our decent into drug addled surrealness.

As the bus pulled out of Byron Bay Jonny Depp in his portrayal of Raoul Duke in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas boomed out of the stereo: “We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid ….also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser…”

Our day may not have been quite so extreme, just alcohol and marijuana for us, but this certainly set the scene for the events about to unfold.

Driving along the highway Jim recounted tales of people who ate one to many ‘special’ cookies and lost the plot on the way home. He told us about a woman who barricaded herself on the bus after convincing herself the day-trippers in the shop getting munchies were actually assembling a collection of automatic weapons!

Musical accompaniment to the commentary provided the in bus entertainment. As we crossed the border between the “oppressive Catholic clutches,” of Lismore into the more “Pagan orientated” outskirts of Nimbin ‘Break on Through’ by The Doors blared from the stereo.

We pulled into Nimbin after a brief pub stop with the mellow tones of a tune called ‘Lets go smoke some pot’; a clear indication of how most people intended spending the afternoon!

We’d been warned it was illegal, told not to do it and informed of how much we should expect to pay for it! Now we had two hours to take Jim’s advice into consideration and explore the sights of Nimbin.

All around barefooted, dreadlocked hippies went about their daily business with large smiles on their faces; the pace if life in Nimbin was decidedly chilled out.

Nimbin consists of one main street fronted by shops with names such as ‘The Hemp Embassy’ and ‘Bring a Bong’. These shops cater to all hippy tastes including spiritual books, legal herbal highs, and lots of drug paraphernalia. To find the ‘illegal’ herbal highs we had to head to Nimbin museum; or just wonder down the street past one of many people not very subtly asking if we’d like to buy some weed? Cookies? Even some acid?!

Nimbin museum smelt like the inside of any serious dope smokers bedroom. The exhibitions apparently cover most periods of Nimbin’s history from the Aboriginals to it’s emergence of the marajuna capital of Australia, but all I could make out was a higildy pigidly mass of stuff dedicated to dope culture and legalisation of marijuana. Amongst the clutter of exhibitions, featuring at least three classic VW camper-vans, dealers were openly dishing out bags of marijuana completely unbothered by the police who were chilling out in their station 10 doors up the road!

Nimbin’s origin as the marijuana capital of Australia dates back to the Aquarius festival of 1973. The Aquarius festival attracted large numbers of university students, alternative lifestylers, ‘hippies’ and party people, many of whom were smoking marijuana. This attracted the attention of local authorities who chose to ignore the illegal smoking of marijuana. Once the festival was over many of the party goers stayed behind and the authorities have turned a blind eye to dope smoking in the small town ever since.

Every year the ‘hippy’ community of Nimbin hold the Mardi Grass festival to celebrate the marijuana culture and encourage its legalisation. The local community have vowed to hold this festival every year until law is changed.

Once I’d immersed myself in Nimbin’s aura, realising there was probably nowhere else quite like it in the world it was time to get back on the bus hoping the high from those cookies I’d just eaten wouldn’t kick in too soon!

As the bus pulled away to the sound of ‘Exodus’ by Bob Marley all around the bus people had the self satisfied grins of those who’d had a taste of what they came for! We soon entered another world, the home of Paul Recher with his bizarre collection of junk art, tropical forest in the back garden and a perfect haven for a bus of slightly stoned backpackers!

As we got off the bus I marveled at the collection of cars, old TV’s, typewriters and all sorts of other junk assembled into a pile that Paul calls art! Accompanied by two friends, who were well and truly feeling the effects of the cookies, we stumbled down his tree lined driveway into a hut overlooking a small lake that served as our haven for the next hour. Some people went on a tour of Paul’s tropical fruit forest but with my friends alternately giggling, whispering then forgetting what they were talking about I thought it best to stay put an marvel at how many shades of green could be found in the garden!!

By the time we left the majority of the bus were well and truly toasted with one girl asking where we’d been that morning and almost setting the whole group off into a contagious round of giggles. Managing to suppress the laughter we clambered aboard the bus. All that remained was to stare straight ahead and enjoy the bus ride home in a stoned haze.

A day full of bizarre twists and turns that left two of my friends in a marijuana induced 13 hour sleep. If that can happen on a normal day I can only wonder what craziness could be unleashed at the Mardi Grass!

* Posted by j150vsc on 27/11/2007.