Happy Hippies...

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Today was a really funny day- we visited the Happy Hippie town of Nimbin. We were supposed to be picked up for our day trip there at 10:20, at about 10:55 a rainbow painted mini-bus rolled into our driveway. We jumped aboard and met Ivan, our South African tour guide who clearly was living on Nimbin time. We drove the about hour to Nimbin, and on the way he played lots of good music, and told us a bit of the history of Nimbin. During the Vietnam war, a lot of Australians avoiding the draft went in from the coast and set up communes of sorts. These groups decided to have a week long anti-war festival which was called the Aquarius Festival. It was full of hippies and lots of drugs, and both have never really left. The police and government really just look the other way in Nimbin, and people offer you cookies and marijuana just walking down the street. There's a lot of colourful characters around, all of whom really enjoyed my "Don't Worry Be Happy" tee-shirt I wore for the occasion. After a couple of hours to hang out and shop around town, we were taken to a beautiful waterfall and swimming hole, and then to a barbecue site where we had a nice BBQ of sausages and burgers and salad. After that we drove back to Byron Bay, and all took naps and sort of took it easy all night... We were all pretty tired for some reason.

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