Old men, Hippies and Thunderbird Park

Leaving Bellingen behind we set off North again and, after much meandering, we ended up on the Friday night at small town called Kyogle. We were headed for the Border Ranges National Park but, when Sandra heard the Kyogle Market was on the next morning, we opted for a commercial campsite in the town. The Information Office told us that there was one site in the town although there was “another place” near the showground that had camping. Inevitably we found ourselves at the “other place” which proved interesting. There were hardly any campers there, it being populated with a number of decrepit residential caravans mostly housing equally decrepit single old men plus a number of single young men in temporary accommodation. Surrounded by older people of course made Sandra quite at home (professionally speaking of course) – so we stayed for two nights.

The Kyogle Market provided us with fresh fruit and veg but was a bit disappointing on the Arts and Crafts front which was Sandra’s main interest. A further disappointment came in the evening as I had noticed the pub had up a big sign saying it sold Guinness – it didn’t!

After the market we went for a drive to Nimbin – a town we had visited many years before and we were interested to see if there had been any changes. Nimbin is famous for being the “Hippy Town” as in 1973 it was the venue for the Aquarius Festival. Then the town was filled with long-haired, beautiful people – free-love was the order of the day and the appropriate music and drugs permeated the scene – it was pretty far out man! After Aquarius - enamoured by the good weather, liberal attitudes and easily available marijuana – many stayed on to enjoy an alternative lifestyle. When we arrived there for the first time, a quarter of a century had passed since Aquarius, but many of the hippies were still in residence although no longer in the first flush of youth. The main street was a row of psychedelically painted shops selling a range of drug related paraphernalia and the odd postcard. After only five minutes I was approached and asked if I wanted to “score”.

Another 14 years have passed and I am delighted to say that nothing has changed - the row of tacky psychedelic shops was still there and Sandra was offered drugs after five minutes on the street (she never actually told me if she had accepted the offer) There have been some changes of course – the ageing hippies have aged even further, their children have run away from home to seek alternative lifestyles as accountants in Sydney and the whole “hippy culture” has in itself become a tourist attraction (is that not a contradiction in itself?) Companies now run Nimbin tours using brightly painted double-decker buses (see photo) bringing weekend hippies from the coast to experience the hippy lifestyle. I am convinced that many of the aging hippies are in fact employed by the Council to add authenticity to the streets and to offer the tourists drugs so they would not leave disappointed – the “Nimbin Experience”!

Nimbin is a seriously interesting place with a lot of good, but different, shops and art galleries – I highly recommend a visit – particularly if you are of an age to remember “The Summer of Love”

The following day we eventually got to the Border Ranges following the “Lions Road” – so called as it was built as a tourist road over the mountains by the Lions Clubs of Kyogle and Beaudesert, small towns on either side of the New South Wales / Queensland border. The views over the caldera of a massive, but long extinct, volcano were stunning as was the scenery generally – but best of all was the crossing into Queensland – after two and a half months we had eventually left New South Wales. There is still a long way to go – and time is getting short.

The first town we came to was Beaudesert with didn’t appear to have much to hold us so we pushed on to Canungra and Tambourine Mountain with the intention of camping somewhere on the latter. Canungra was a great little town, although a bit touristy, with interesting shops selling “genuine” Ned Kelly wanted posters and a great hotel where we had lunch – massive plates of fish and proper home-made chips, a rare treat. Then on to Tambourine Mountain to camp – or not to camp as it happened.

We assumed that, at the top of the mountain there would be bush camping, however when we got to the top we were surprised to find smart houses with manicured lawns and a general genteelness more appropriate to rural Surrey than the sort of places we normally camped. Pressing on we arrived at the Thunderbird Park campsite (see photo) – very busy and swarming with kids on their last weekend of the Easter holidays – it was some sort of theme park which led to our quick exit. We are not Thunderbird Park campers.

So on to Brisbane a day earlier that expected to stay with our old friends Willie and Helen Tait, whom many of you will remember from Eskbank, and their three delightful (dare I say otherwise!) children Jenny, Cameron and Kirsty. Thereafter followed yet another coincidence and “small world” experience that makes all the others pale into insignificance – see next blog.