Jeni Kendell and Megan James, The Nimbin GoodTimes

The Aquarius Foundation and friends have decided to hold an anniversary event each year that honours and celebrates the radical spirit created at the 1973 Aquarius Festival.

The Aquarius Festival had the slogan ‘You are the Festival’, where people shared their skills, building domes and yurts, making food, providing health care, sharing music and dance and starting an inspired on-going community.

So much change flowed from the Festival – the town of Nimbin was “recycled” after going through real rural hardship; young people returned and wanted to share land. A group of young people calling themselves the ‘Nimbin Karavan’ toured Sydney and Melbourne in a bus spreading the word about buying shares in a 200-acre ex-dairy farm at Tuntable Falls.

Shares were $200 each and soon $100,000 was raised to buy the land and Tuntable Falls Co-ordination Co-operative was born as an experimental model of affordable housing, shared land ownership and sustainable community development.

In the 1980s, the PanCommunity collective was formed from members of the many different land sharing communities in the region that had been developed. PanCom worked to challenge the State and Local Govt legislation around housing, and in 1983 the concept of Multiple Occupancies was enshrined in law.

Fifty years later the Tuntable Falls co-op continues to thrive. Dharmananda has been successfully going for 52 years and the Multiple Occupancy creation continues to grow and change with all kinds of different communities which of course have their joys and problems, but continue to provide so many people with affordable homes, gardens and a deep experience of community living.

Because we have always been at the cutting edge of change in the Northern Rivers area, we decided that this first ‘After 52 years what?’ conversation day should be about community, land sharing, new housing solutions and what we have learned about living together.

Of course, now so much is different. Locally, we were rocked by the 2019 bushfire disasters and the 2022 flood and landslide catastrophe. Globally and nationally, we are all dealing with climate change, unaffordable housing and homelessness, and there has been a consequent emergence of new and different models of housing and shared living.

Now is a great time to reclaim our power, to start working together and take action, using our shared experience of community living over the past 50 years and also taking on new relevant ideas.

‘After 52 years what?’ is to be a one-day 10am-5pm event held in the Nimbin Town Hall on Saturday 24th May. Everyone and anyone who is interested to gain and share ideas, knowledge and wisdom is welcome. There will be food also!

Carol Perry, co-founder of the 53-year old Dharmananda community at The Channon, has committed to attend, as have older and younger members of regional multiple occupancies. Carol is a dynamic mediator which is such a special quality and knowledge to solve problems that arise along the way.

We’re also very fortunate to have as a speaker Wendy Stone, Professor of Housing and Social Policy, Director of the AHURI Swinburne Research Centre which leads HHAUS, the Housing, Homelessness and Urban Studies Research Group at Swinburne. Wendy’s current research is around generational and gendered housing precarity and well-being, innovative housing solutions and aspirations across generations, and citizen engagement through public policy.

A speaker has been invited from Common Equity NSW, whose mission is to lead and grow co-operative housing for the independence and well-being of people and communities. Also invited is Shane Sylvanspring from Planning Regenerative Communities which assists development of ecovillages, intentional communities and alternative land ownership models that foster regenerative practices. His skills are in town planning, project management, ecovillage design, community facilitation, community management and experience in DAs. Shane has successfully worked to establish the new community at Afterlee, west of Kyogle.

Come along and participate in what we expect to be a lively and stimulating discussion and please contact us if you are keen to be involved as a speaker: Meg 0429-009-594 or Jeni: paulandjeni144@gmail.com.

More details will be published in the May edition of NGT [The Nimbin GoodTimes].

This article appeared in The Nimbin GoodTimes, April 2025.