For many people, Nimbin is synonymous with marijuana. Teetotaller Lindsey Cuthbertson reveals his love-hate relationship with his 'hessian mecca' home town.
When I was five, my Dad took my younger brother and I into town to buy milk and bread. It was 1993 and Nimbin was grappling with a pretty bad heroin problem. I'd see used syringes in the gutter and sometimes even in the playground of my primary school. I didn't really know what was going on back then, but I knew by the way my parents spoke about these sorts of things that they weren't good.
The main street of Nimbin in 1997.
In town there was a man who looked like he was overdosing on heroin. He was huddled down the side of a shop in an alley that my father, my brother and I were walking through. Dad stopped us and turned to the man.
“Mate, can you tell my sons what it's like to be a drug addict?” Dad asked him.
'Hessian mecca' Nimbin.
The man turned to Dad and in no uncertain terms told him where to go.
But Dad persisted, explaining to the man that he wasn't joking around or even trying to ridicule him. He just wanted my brother and I to learn a lesson.
We learnt a lesson all right. The man started to cry, looked us in the eyes and told us how it felt to be addicted to heroin. He'd lost his family, his job, his friends. The life he used to live had been cast aside in the gutter like a used syringe.
Both my brother and I have never touched drugs, and I'm pretty sure this memory played a large part in that.
I've always had a love-hate relationship with the town of Nimbin. Even now, after living away for three years, I find myself wearing its name as a badge of pride when people ask me where I'm from, then becoming frustrated when they laugh, smile or wink at me when I answer. Nimbin has that polarising effect on me, and it probably always will.
Because while Nimbin has a tight-knit and accepting communal heart that beats with a flurry, it also has a sickness running through its veins.
The growing, smoking and selling of marijuana is probably the only thing many people know about the place; it fuels its alternative lifestyle, anti-establishment vibe and economy. But it's the harder drugs that have ridden into town on weed's coattails over the past few decades that have done the most damage.
Like I say to most people who ask, Nimbin isn't any different to any other town or city in Australia when it comes to drug problems; the only difference is that Nimbin's are out there on the street for all to see.
While Nimbin has a tight-knit and accepting communal heart that beats with a flurry, it also has a sickness running through its veins
I don't want to paint Nimbin as a drug addled town, because it's only been like that for 40 years and in many ways it's a whole lot more. Before The Aquarius Festival of 1973 and its decadent attitude to free love, Nimbin was nothing more than a quiet farming community, and before that it was (and still is) the home of the Widjabul people.
My parents' house is nestled in a quiet valley that looks out over the Nimbin Rocks. I go home and feel incredibly at peace. The landscape around the area is breathtaking; it's why a lot of people come to visit and never end up leaving.
Nimbin would have stayed quiet and peaceful if it wasn't for the hippies and other creative types that travel there like it is some form of hessian mecca.
When I first lived there in 1993-1994, I was friends with a neighbour down the road who was a few years older than me. When I returned to live there in 2003, that same kid was on the street dealing. It stands to reason that if you spend your whole life exposed to a particular way of living, it'll start to become normal. If it wasn't for my parents educating me about the effects of drugs and their rational approach to the 'Nimbin Lifestyle', that could have been me. Instead, the Nimbin environment helped influence me in becoming a teetotaler.
In a way I'm thankful that Nimbin is the way it is, because if it was something else, I probably wouldn't be the person that I am today.
When I was younger, I despised people who were addicted to drugs. But what I learnt living in Nimbin is that for people without much of an education or support from family and friends, drugs can seem like the only thing that can silence the demons raging inside their heads. There's no hate anymore, just a level of empathy that has replaced it.
Where once I was ashamed to admit that I'm a Nimbin boy, I'm now proud of the fact. Without realising it, the town has been a shining example of what to be: honest to yourself, creative, and never afraid to zig when the rest of the world zags. But it has also taught me that I can be all of these things without jumping onboard with alternative trends or into the street lifestyle.
The best thing about Nimbin is that at the end of the day, the town and the people who live in it accept you for who you are.
There's more to Nimbin than just the colourful shop fronts and even more eye-catching residents. I learnt some of life's great lessons growing up in that town. It's a cultural melting pot of the best and worst that society has to offer. Spend some time there and you might learn something about yourself.