As hundreds make the pilgrimage to celebrate the 50th anniversary of an event hailed as the birthplace of the counter-culture movement in Australia, a key question remains: has the dream of the first Nimbin Aquarius festival been realised half a century on?
In the early 1970s, a group of Sydney university students were keen to create an Australian version of Woodstock: a counter-culture festival that celebrated art, sustainability, harmony and freedom.
Their search for a suitable site landed them in Nimbin, a once conservative town folded in rolling green hills and rainforest in northern New South Wales, beaten almost to bankruptcy by the dairy depression of the late 1960s.
