Hi all I'm looking to take to the road this summer and I really need a place where I can lay low and just chill and think. Is Nimbin really the freethinkers haven people rumour it to be or is it just a place that tourists go to get cheap weed? Much love.
Well I live on the Goldie, however over the years have gone to Nimbin quite a bit and had friends that live there. So I guess Byron has changed alot and become more modern and Nimbin, well regardless of what get's said about the place, the only thing that has changed is that instead of just being able to score weed anywhere, now you can just score just about any fucking thing. So to me Nimbin is the same old, and just about the only hippie haven place left, only the drugs have changed. I don't really see what is so bad about that, its still just as fucked up and hippy as ever to me, I think its still a cool little place, because it still totally alternative and know one really gives a fuck, unless its about drugs. Cheers
I wne to nimbin on a daytrip from byron bay last year.....it's a nice little small town and the people are very friendly even though some are a bit odd. We met a lot of really interesting people there and purchased some fambulous cookies. There are some really cheap caravan parks and backpackers places in Nimbin si i'm sure it would be a nice place for some r & r. I liked Byron Bay better but advice for anyone: if you want to go there to relax, i'd suggest not going in the period o time between the end of november and the first half of december. That is when schoolies is on, and although i enjoyed it as they were all my age, the peace and serenity of the location was sort of destroyed by the abunance of teenagers, drunk and on the rampage.
Well, I need r&r - so I'm heading to Nimbin. I am currently passing through the Gold Coast and it is as busy as hell (to me, anyway) so I am looking forward to finding somewhere cruisy. I don't do drugs, so I'm hoping they won't be forced upon me in Nimbin (hopfully free love will!)
Oh the goldie is allways busy man, even away from the holiday seasons, plus its getting a little weird with gangs and shit. But in Nimbin you are sure to have someone asking you to buy something, but like Amsterdam, just say no and they leave you alone no problems at all, and yes behind the doors theres a little free lovin' going on, yeeew, go the Nimbin I say, its a cool place that hasn't really lost the vibe, but still, you have to try the cookies!!!
So who'll be there at the end of the weekend!!!!!!!!!! It'd be nice to have some people to meet when I get there .....
i visited nimbin for a day not very long ago and i honestly, did not find it at all inviting or comfortable. I don't at all think of myself as a hippy although some might say i am... amongst the mainstream i appear alternative but in a town like nimbin i feel the opposite... i sort of felt like i wasn't welcome there, like i wasn't 'feral' enough to be there. that really turned me off nimbin, not to mention within 10mins of walking down the main street i was offered a variety of drugs, which i didn't want and it just felt weird. i sort of got the impression that the people there felt a need to prove themselves as hippies or something by living there...
i guess i just felt like a tourist, and i hate that feeling. sort of like im looking at animals in a zoo... it just felt... wrong. i didn't get good vibes from nimbin anyway
Yeah I hear ya there Ethereal, thats what seems to get said about Nimbin, now we have 10 year olds coming up in the street asking if you want to buy some smack, where it used to be weed, but I guess I'm just a feral who likes the place!! But then again, I hang with some locals when there, so I guess I'm not outside looking into the fish bowl of Nimbin, each to their own I guess. Peace
Thanks for your views ethereal. I think that's how I'll feel too. I'm in Byron Bay now (don''t like it by the way) and so I might head out that way when I leave.
I was in Nimbin last year with a few friends : great atmosphere , really nice people. We talked a lot with some "important" characters (mayor, painter,etc). Back this yearat the same period of the year : all the nice people we had met had left (Blue Mountains or elsewhere).Tourists who don't even smile ! By the way , we noticed the same decay in Byron Bay and at the Bellingen famous "hippy" market.Too many people come just to visit these places, like going to a zoo.They don't participate and have not the mentality of the place either.An amazing exception : Doug, who owns the Rainbow Backpacker's retreat (Nimbin) was still the same : real hippy (better; "Rainbow"!) minded person. Well ,the same changes are visible elsewhere in the world: all the "in" places become tourists' resorts (Cairns, Kathmandu, Ibiza, etc.). That's seems to be life on earth! Be happy, anyway!
yeh so really its only made bad by people like ethereal , tourists who are not going there to be involved at all but caus they heard its a cool place to go. but it did look a little seedy on the internet, and it did appear that some of the nimbiners were tryin too hard to be hippies. i cant see how youd like nimbin if you didnt do drugs, not because drugs are the only thing to get from nimbin, but because if youre a person who doesnt do drugs, chances are youre just gonna have different priorities, and interpretations, and most importantly, youre gonna have different comforts than the people who do take drugs or are around drugs a lot. most probably, if one went to nimbin who hadnt even touched drugs, they would pick up all the physical dirtiness and scrappyness of the town and people, pick up some sort of rift with the people (probably just that theyre not predictable in the way that people back home are, when on drugs), and at the same time miss all the vibes of freedom and openness, vibes that cannabis in particular thrives on, but arent as relatable when your mind has not been opened
when a cool spot gets known too much..then it gets spoiled..a sort of commercialising tourism..I agree the same thinbg happens in many different places:like one of you said Kathmandu I can ad Christiania (the hippy quarter in Copenhagen) and many more..I felt it in Pragh too. maybe in Amsterdam (all the rumors off shutting the coffe shops down are due to it..like in Ticino in Switzerland, too many people used to go over the boarder to get weed and so they closed the hemp shops..) when a place it too much known, then it gets spoiled..so we gotta find or raise up new spots..
