"Stillpoint", Tai Chi Workshop, Ballina Beach, 1982
Image: © John W McCormick

Dancing the Revolution

I came to Nimbin because I felt that here was the best chance to play an active part in the formation of a totally new, autonomous and tolerant community-oriented society. Aquarian Nimbin gained the strength to establish itself in the political direct actions of the 60's and early 70's against the war in Vietnam, sexism and the inequity in education, health and justice, that were central to my life at the time.

With children of our own it became time to create our new society rather than to proselyte its arrival. We brought with us an iconoclastic disregard for the standard political hypocrisy and cant, the priority of putting the Earth Spirit' s dictates above that of all other loyalties, and an incorrigible sense of play with which we re-wrote the political operating manuals.

We have created no leaders but instead a community of friends; we have produced no dogma but instead operated in a pluralistic fashion tailoring actions and outcomes to the individual situations; we have re-written the history books in regard to land occupancy, environmental direct action, home birthing, autonomous power, natural health and the re-greening of the earth and agriculture; and we have been instrumental in helping overturn a safe conservative bastion through Helen Caldicott and subsequent campaigns. We think globally but act locally.

We are slowly but surely creating a state of community, social and environmental health that has begun to radiate out and carry with it a healing of the personal spirit and planetary integrity.

We are not afraid of the future for we understand the awesome and bountiful nature of our Mother Earth.

We are accompanied by spirits of renewal and infinite resource.

We dance in our revolution.

Bob Hopkins, Nimbin