See 2023 report for the
50th anniversary HERE:
"Nimbin Aquarius Festival Diary, 1973"
Index:
Part 1
20th anniversary
Part 2
40th anniversary - Aquarius & Beyond Project
Part 2
2023
~ ~ ~
Part 1
20th anniversary
Nimbin for me: A Personal Journey, December 1992
Maireid Sullivan (known by English translation "Margaret" in those times.)
Maireid and Brigette, April 1973, on Nimbin 'hill' before it became a campground.
Memories of Nimbin are a very personal experience. I like to believe that most of us, who participated in the spirit of the Nimbin Aquarius Festival, still feel the same idealistic urge, which was the basis of our love of life way back in ‘those days’.
Our memories remain fresh! Even though large spaces in the time and distance have kept us apart, it only serves to heighten the great surge of excitement and happiness we experience when we meet along the way and remember the statement we attempted to make “way back then” and in the projects we have promoted throughout our lives.
My daughter, Brigette and I were on our way out of Australia. We left Melbourne in early 1972, stayed in Sydney for six months, and arrived in Brisbane in late 1972.
I wanted to see more of the world and I was on a journey of discovery following a epiphany: “To come together in every experience; to know the power and the glow of at-one-ment. That is our goal—to be united in the centre of our being in love.”
My happy encounter with Nimbin came when I was performing in concert during Queensland University orientation week, in February 1973, where I met Grahame Cathcart, who was co-ordinating QU’s participation in an upcoming Festival sponsored by the National Union of Students. He invited me to perform at the town of Nimbin which was selected to be the site for a Festival with a theme of “Survival”.
I agreed to go to Nimbin to sing at the Town Hall in a concert designed to convince the local people that the Festival would be a good thing for the town.
There were only a handful of Festival organisers in the town at this stage. I fell in love with all of them, so I decided to stay on and work for the Festival concept.
This was where I found my kindred spirits - students and farmers! The many issues of those who were drawn together by the Festival theme of “Survival” - were also my own great concerns.
Shortly after my arrival, I was invited by Johnny Allan, Festival Co-Director, to take up a role on behalf of the Festival - a PR role as “Information Officer” where my task was to talk to the local residents and to meet the weekend visitors who came to participate in preparations over the three months prior to the Festival. My brief was to introduce them to the Festival concept as it developed and to the tasks to be undertaken in creating the facilities for the Festival. (I am proud of the fact that after the Festival I was elected to the Nimbin Progress Association as Public Relations Representative and, jointly elected with Terry McGee as co-Publicity Representatives.)
My role as “Information Officer” was the most satisfying and exciting job I have ever taken on! It liberated my personality at a very tender age. You see, I had spent a childhood gallivanting in the Irish country-side, as a “tomboy” - eldest of seven. Then, I was transported in pre-adolescence to the ‘heady’ environment of the great city of San Francisco, where I sought alternative adventures in the pursuit of ‘earnest interests’ in Buddhism, social politics, history, philosophy, and music.
This experience created in me a complex ‘personality’ - both introverted and extroverted. The solution to this dilemma came in two ways for me; firstly, as a singer I had the right to express my sensitivity through songs, and secondly, in Nimbin, I was given a job which gave me the right - the responsibility to speak to strangers about the most important things in life to do with “survival”. This was paradise! I still passionately maintain many of those friendships established during that time and later.
There are floods of memories to be shared and laughed about. I remember the concerts we gave in the towns around the area (we travelled in the back of an old truck) as a troupe called the Aquarius Magic Caravan. We had our audiences laughing and crying with our great variety of talents.
After two years in Nimbin, Brigette and I went overseas for a couple of years, on a pilgrimage to Ireland via Asia and Europe. We returned to Nimbin in 1976 for nearly a year but went on to Melbourne for Brigette’s education and my work.
When I visited Nimbin in 1990 I was stunned to find so many people I know and love still living there or visiting for the holidays. It was like a home-coming for me.
1973 seems like yesterday. What a great impact it made on our lives.
Maireid Sullivan
Melbourne
December 1992
Passport Photo - April 1974
Part 2
Back to top
40th Anniversary: Aquarius & Beyond Project
Southern Cross University interview: November 2012
Excerpt
"It's all about the meaning we give our own experience!" - Maireid Sullivan
AQUARIUS & BEYOND PROJECT [Part 2) pdf
Interview with Maireid Sullivan Nov. 20, 2012
Location: Southern Cross University, Lismore campus – conducted via telecommunication
Interviewers : Jessica Schultz and Jasmine Lucas
Duration: 1:19:48 {second half only} starting at 00:40:00
Halfway mark - (Interview statements summarised by interviewees)
Points of discussion:
~ Advocate of land value tax.
~ Public action is much quicker today than was possible in previous years.
~ Boom bust cycles, due to speculation.
~ Music and self-help books carried people through these cycles, but now we have more independent way to communicate.
~ Feels that Aquarius was a movement about being responsible and informed for things like the impact that we have on the environment.
~ People used to jam at the festival rather than reading notes and improvising. Thus Aquarius helped people interact through music.
~ Music as collaboration during Aquarius.
~ Gough Whitlam had just opened up multiculturalism.
~ Festival was more of a reflection of the music scene rather than an emphasis on music per se. The emphasis was the ideas.
~ Dollar Brand and the Bauls of Bengal were the highlight of the artists at Aquarius.
Maireid toured with the Bauls of Bengal for a while as an opening act - solo singer.
~ Fond memory of being in a 400-500 seat ANU hall, Canberra, her daughter was backstage sleeping, but woke up and came running onstage while Maireid was performing, so she sang her daughter a lullaby and put her back to sleep as part of the show.
...
~ Everyone began hugging in Nimbin, every hello and good bye everyone hugged.
...
~ Aquarius acted to publicize ideas that disrupted the consumerist norms of society.
~ The festival acted to start conversations, which in turned help change and inform residents in the Northern rivers region (and beyond).
~ Liberal conservative values as a political history of Australia.
~ Discusses the ways in which Aquarius acted to start conversations that included the values and ideas that had been pigeonholed during the political formation of Australia.
~ People (old settlers) could tell the difference between the itinerants in Nimbin, and the people who just wanted to live in peace and start communities etc.
~ Local people were happy with the people that were genuinely there for the festival and the ideas espoused by the festival. However, the itinerants caused a culture clash.
~ Discussion about the gap in time from when Maireid left Nimbin, to when she return years later. Stayed 1.5 years after the festival. Became a political researcher in Ireland for a year, and came back to Nimbin an unhappy person.
~ When she returned to Nimbin, people were trying to make the Nimbin primary school more progressive, but without success. Moved back to Melbourne because she could not get the lifestyle that she wanted for her and her daughter in Nimbin (1976-7).
Part 3
Back to top
Remembering the 1973 Aquarius Magik Caravan
by Maireid Sullivan
May 2023
The Aquarius Magik Caravan, a "Musical Happening", featuring a
great range of talents - singers, musicians, actors, puppeteers - performed in the town halls around Nimbin, from Casino to Byron Bay, during the lead-up to the festival.
Led by the legendary "Aquarian Songman" Paul Joseph, rehearsals began in late March of 1973, with our first concert on 13 April.
Founding members (single-event performers joined in over the season):
Paul Joseph, stayed on at Nimbin.
Rob and Jane Andrews, puppeteers, moved to Tasmania.
Banjo Neil & Jaimie (autoharp), of Chickens#!t Bluegrass Band, returned to Brisbane after the festival.
Margaret "Maireid" Sullivan and daughter Brigette travelled o/s for two years (1975/6), returned for one year, 1976/7 and, in 1977, moved to Melbourne to continue Brigette's education at the Melbourne Rudolf Steiner School.
Paul Joseph introduced what became our anthem and closing chorus: an excerpt from A Very Cellular Song, by Mike Heron, Tk 4, The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter, 1968, The Incredible String Band.
May the longtime sun shine upon you
All love surround you
And the pure light within you
Guide your way on/home
The program began with the full group singing songs 'everyone' knew.
When audiences were seated, we entered halls from each side - girls on one side and boys on the other, lined up according to height, marching down the isle and on to the stage singing -
"Whose the leader of the band that's made for you and me."
Call and response across the hall:
- Girls calling out "Micky Mouse"
- Boys calling out "Donald Duck"
Forever let us hold our banner
High! High! High! High! (back and forth across the hall)
Come along and sing the song
And join the jamboree!
M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E
Yeah Mickey!
On stage, we launched into a choreographed medley of old 'standards' - gospel songs, Tin Pan Alley jazz songs and Soft-shoe dance numbers, encouraging everyone in the audience to sing along, followed with our own individual 'acts'.
Audience were falling over themselves with laughter.
No wonder the spirit of Nimbin lives on!
Opening with a verse or two of choreographed songs:
Side By Side, Moonlight Bay, Daisy Daisy, Honeysuckle Rose
1.
Side By Side (Kay Starr, 1952)
Oh, we ain't got a barrel of money,
maybe we're ragged and funny,
but we travel along singing our song, side by side,
... through all kinds of weather, maybe the sky will fall
Just as long as we're together,
it doesn't really, really doesn't matter at all. ...
2.
On Moonlight Bay (Percy Wenrich & Edward Madden, 1912)
We were sailing along on Moonlight Bay
We could hear the voices ringing
They seemed to say
"You have stolen her heart"
"Now don't go 'way"
As we sang love's old sweet song on Moonlight Bay ...
3.
Baby Face (Benny Davis, 1926)
Baby Face! You've got the cutest little baby face
There ain't another who can take your place
My baby face
My poor heart is jumpin'
You sure have started somethin'
Baby face
I'm up in heaven
When i'm in your warm embrace
I didn't need a shove.
I just fell in love with your pretty baby face ...
4.
Honeysuckle Rose (Fats Waller & Andy Razaf, 1929)
Every honey bee fills with jealousy,
when they see you out with me.
I don't blame them, goodness knows, Honeysuckle Rose.
When you're passing by,
flowers droop and sigh,
and I know the reason why.
I don't use sugar,
You only have to touch my cup.
You're my sugar.
It's sweeter when you stir it up.
When I'm taking sips from your tasty lips
goodness, how the honey drips.
You're confection, goodness knows, Honeysuckle Rose.
Back to top
| 
