Nimbin

Today I visited the marijuana capital of Australia- the very bizarre town of Nimbin, about an hour inland of Byron Bay. I took a bus tour there, which was famous for its soundtrack, especially selected to put you in the mood for whatever you are doing- starting the day with Sublime ("early in the morning, rising to the street"), doing a uturn with Tracy Chapman ("give me one reason to stay here and i'll turn right back around"), and going down a crazy hill with some crazy Pink Floyd. It was a very interesting and unique experience, although not one that I would want to repeat. Since I'm not into doing drugs, especially not by myself, I was just going to Nimbin as an observer. This was not that case for most of the other people on the bus- which I guess I should have expected. But seeing this town might have been worth putting up with the people. Its like someone forgot to tell the whole town that the 60s are over. Actually, I'm not even convinced that the 60s were like this. Maybe the 60s in San Francisco, but all concentrated on the one main street of a small country town. There are people of all ages looking dressed for woodstock, coming up to you and asking if you want to buy weed or cookies. There's the legalize marijuana campaign established in a storefront called The HEMP Embassy. There's the Nimbin Museum which is basically a collection of junk scattered around three rooms of a store, and leading you to the patio outback where you can buy your "souvenirs". It is so odd! And actually, being my lame self, it made me a bit uncomfortable.

After Nimbin we had a possibly even weirder stop at the rainforest preserve home of the tour guide's friend. The friend is a guy- from Long Island!!!- who came to Australia escaping the Vietnam draft and basically hasn't been back since. He also didn't seem to have washed, cut his hair, or changed his clothes since. And he was wearing nail polish. Not that thats a bad thing, but if I saw this guy on the street in any city I would think he was homeless. Actually, he owns numerous acres of rainforest preserve. What he did when he got to Australia was to start replanting the original trees and plants that had grown on the land before colonists cleared in for cattle in the 1800s. He's done an amazing job, and we got to walk around part of his property and see lots of cool looking plants as well as the random action figures and sculptures that he's placed in the trees. He also has a bunch of different buildings around the property- I guess one is his house, and one we got to hang out in was a kind of boathouse type building overlooking a pond. He called the place his "hippie estate". It was pretty sweet to see how happy he was there, living his own way on his own land, even if I would have recommended a few more showers per week.

I got back to town in the early evening, showered, had a really good dinner of king prawns (aka large shrimp) and am now posting before I go back to my room to pack up. Tomorrow morning I make my last move back to Sydney. I have to spend the whole day on the bus, so I won't be posting tomorrow, but please keep reading and send me some comments before the blog is over forever.

Oh- and one last thing. Last night after I posted I went out for drinks with Tanja again. As we were sitting and talking, the most amazing thing happened- I looked over at the table next to us and saw the Irish couple (Caroline and Andy) who I had travelled with on the Easyrider bus in WA!!! I could not believe it! It was so nice to catch up with them after 2.5 months- and so totally unexpected too. It just made me feel really good about my trip and meeting people and all that. I guess it is a small world, even in massive Australia!

Next post from Sydney!

Love,
Emma