Nimbin is a colourful town with a small settlement and an alternative lifestyle. It is the self-proclaimed hippie capital of Australia and a delight for free-spirited explorers.

The Nimbin Aquarius festival of 1973 brought thousands of free spirited young people with alternative thinking who were looking for a sustainable lifestyles, Nimbin is often described as Australia’s equivalent to the Woodstock Festival.  The existence of a drug culture in Nimbin since 1973 has been accompanied by a prevalence of collective and public creativity: colourful and spiritually motivated art, music, poetry, craft, and fashion can all be seen on the main street. The town is known as a hotspot for alternative social activities, grassroots political discourse, and the espousal of naturalist, humanist, anarchist, feminist, libertarian, permissive, new-age, mystical, and radical social philosophies which can all be seen as collective creative endeavours.

The first lesson of Nimbin is that it’s inhabitants are not like anywhere else in Australia. 

To me Nimbin was paradise and so we stayed for 10 years. We settled in a small off-grid cabin and yurt on the side of a mountain, overlooking a private valley and stream and surrounded by animals.  It was in this place that my true education began.

For nearly a decade I spent most of my days alone whilst Penelope worked at the local university and our daughter attended the local school.  Our accommodation was basic with (eventually) a small solar system, composting toilet and fresh rainwater.  We had snakes in the ceiling, café blinds for walls and open timber decking for floors. I spent everyday outside in silence and solitude and soon found myself connected to the energy of the earth in a way I had never imagined.

Time to think

With time on my hands and surrounded by a community of inclusive creative thinkers and artists I began to explore.  I immersed myself in flow arts, and began performing.  I would walk to town in the morning and spend the day performing for the tourists on the street, I would travel to markets and festivals to perform just to share the joy.  As I was reveling in this alternative life I also became intensely interested in alternative health and energetic healing.  I have some physical disabilities and have not had great experiences with our western medical system so I began to read and study.  I took courses in homeopathy and Reiki, and became interested in sound baths and the power of singing bowls. I read extensively and eventually took a sabbatical to study at the Thai Massage School of Chang Mai.

The longer I spent living in paradise and working on myself the stronger I felt my powers grow.  I had always felt the emotions of others but hadn’t acknowledge their significance, now I couldn’t ignore it.

I couldn’t get enough, I wanted to improve my massage skills so eventually I registered to study Lomi Lomi massage in Byron Bay with Tina Featherheart’s School of the Rising Healer, I will be forever grateful to her for the knowledge and skills she has passed on to me and Penelope.  Feeling empowered I began to offer massages from a clinic in the main street of Nimbin.

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