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THE ALTERNATIVE AUSTRALIA THE FIRST Down to Earth Festival of Alternative Australia was held at the Cotter River near Canberra in December 1976, convened largely through the influence of the former Labour government deputy Prime Minister, Dr. Jim Cairns. He had become interested in the Alternatives Movement during the time of protest against the Vietnam War but was in no position to develop this interest until his ministerial career terminated in 1975, although he did not step down as an MP until 1977. Small working groups were set up in major centres around Australia, although inevitably most of them were concentrated in Victoria and New South Wales where over half the population lives.
The second festival-Confest 77-cam e together a few miles south of Bredbo in New South Wales at Mt. Oak, a dry dusty valley three miles off the main road on the edge of the River Murrumbidgee. A number of people were involved in getting the place together before Christmas but the main part o f the programme was from December 27 —January 2nd. Jim Cairns and his co-workers were planning to set up a Foundation from the event which would purchase the 27,700 acres for A$ 60,000 (A$l = 60p) and set up a settlement to cultivate some of the land which would be a base for the Alternatives movement to regenerate Australia.
Around 7,000—8,000 people gathered at Bredbo after Christmas and camped in the valley, hardly helping the droughtstricken land regenerate itself through the influx of hundreds o f cars and sundry vehicles, although most o f them were asked to park well before the campsite and the people were conveyed to the camping area in shuttle vehicles. Australian public transport being somewhat limited, there was very little way for anyone to get to Bredbo except by car.
On the site itself various interest groups set up their warSs and held daily sessions or occasional workshops to propagate their ideas. The major impact was achieved by the Hare Krishna movement, who set up a large tent next to their bus, erected an ‘altar’ as a focus for worship, and provided free vegetarian meals for anyone who wanted them.
Strolling around the site there were probably less serious groups than at the Cotter River Festival a year ago. A Japanese spiritual group, Mahikari, laid on regular presentations. Every morning there was Kundalini meditation, Dynamic meditation, Yoga, and Sufi dancing and chanting. Massage sessions were held in the dome, while the Healing Village section along the river bank purveyed many herbal and other cures. As a number o f people developed dysentery and tropical ulcers there was no shortage of interest in medical remedies, whether conventional first aid or more unorthodox.
Other groups advertised sessions on Wilhelm Reich, Human Potential, Relaxation workshops and Alternative Communities. Friends of the Earth had a large tent and ‘Stop Uranium Mining’ bumper stickers were in evidence on every other vehicle, with ‘Save the Whale’ probably coming second, the two main interests of Friends of the Earth in Australia these days. Other energy groups were focusing on solar energy and pyramid energy. The most active groups seemed to be the Non-Smokers rights movement which saw its main purpose as launching an offensive against the purveyors of tobacco and to a lesser extent, alcohol, and offered us an array of posters and stickers to this effect. They had systematically defaced public billboards all the way from Sydney to Bredbo and probably in other parts of the country. Their posters attacked tobacco barons as purveyors of death, along with famous personalities who lent their names to advertising particular products. They were complimented by the Cannabis Research Foundation of Australia (CRF A) which was started in 1975 ‘to examine all aspects of cannabis and its role in society with a view to analysing and publishing the results of research collected from world-wide sources on this subject.”
The Bicycle Institute of New South Wales offered a more practical campaign with a small stall, and demands for more bikeways. Up and down the same ‘road’ were various foodstuffs from Tacos (Navajo Indian staple food), good wholemeal bread, and a man who made his living distilling and selling Eucalyptus Oil. Ginseng and various sweets were also on sale.
Some of the greatest interest was in the workshops on natural birth/home birth led by the Gaskins from Stephen’s Farm in Tennessee, now visiting Australia. Other large groups joined in various forms of singing or meditation while others looked on, or went along to hear Jim Cairns offer his brand of social change for ‘the last generation’ in Australia. It was rather vague and some of it he had offered on a sheet of paper which was given to everyone paying their A$ 10 registration fee along with a map and a ‘Kit for Community Survival.’ “The universe must become no lesser for us having lived in it. Based upon the sacred and supreme value of life in us the universe will become greater because we have lived in it in creative work with others and with nature. The honest searching for all that is you, the life of love that is humanity’s due, these are the things I want for you because I want them for myself.”
The whole community was invited to take part in the morning gatherings at 9.30 a.m. near the information boards and notices, while others listened from the food lines where they could either buy their own food or a cooked meal. Usually the meeting was Jim Cairns talking plus some announcements.
Plenty of children were in evidence and there were New Games for them along with swimming in the river, a children’s tent, and a Punch and Judy Show that arrived in a Double Decker red bus, in which Judy beats up Punch for not helping with the housework.
Heavy pop music blared out every night from a free concert on a temporary stage, while other people seemed to prefer sitting around campfires with a guitar or flute. General opinion seemed to be that it was not as well-organised as last year (though still impressive in the circumstances) and few people seemed to think it might effect great changes in Australia. The political Left had dismissed it as irrelevant bourgeois counter-culture, while the media wavered between focus on nudity and dismissal o f Jim Cairns and his coworkers as a bunch of rather harmless cranks. Few people thought that the Bredbo site was a good base for an alternative community; the land would take up to 25 years to regenerate, and having been overgrazed in the past was now being devestated by drought, a common affliction in Australia. It was grossly irresponsible to have the festival on the land as it trampled even more on the already longsuffering earth, and dust was the main problem for most o f the people there, especially as the site tended to be so windy. A$ 60,000 would have been better spent on a more healthy site of half the size although Jim Cairns said he had visited around forty sites before selecting Bredbo.
The society we are seeking to construct will only come about through involvement with people in their homes and workplaces as well as through the development of the constructive alternatives —change generated by an isolated community generally ends up in total collapse or continued isolation even if it is nice for the people who go there. Few communities can reach out beyond themselves, especially when they are as isolated as the one at Bredbo. A fundamental political and economic analysis needs to be followed up with a long term commitment to action and a strategy to work within, besides a vision to stand by-apart from the latter, none of this was evident at Bredbo. Meanwhile Australia is still suffering from the re-election of the right-wing Fraser Government which came to power in November 1975 after the Governor-General’s coup d’etat, a demoralised Labour opposition swinging to the right, the highest unemployment for years, steady inflation, and a small and scattered Old and New Left which seems to be more interested in its own internal feuding than attacking the system. Even Australia’s trade unions are turning to the right offering little hope for solid effective union opposition to uranium mining in the coming years. The Movement Against Uranium Mining is the strongest protest movement in Australia at present and it remains to be seen whether they can maintain the momentum following Fraser’s re-election and his determination to press ahead with mining the uranium. The role of the Aborigine people in opposing it will also be crucial. Tragically the gap between these developments in Australia and the counter-culture is a widening one. I doubt if many of the people at Bredbo saw much coming from the future of the Down to Earth Foundation but the festival felt good to many of us in its way and some of the workshops like the ones on childbirth were an inspiration to those who attended them. If more annual festivals are held they will probably slip into mere celebrations and a good time together which may be all right in itself, but is not the intention of the organisers. Whether this will be recognised or not, and acted on accordingly, remains to be seen. Hopefully they will not be at Bredbo again, or the land will be devastated so badly that it will take even more years to recover once it is finally left alone.
Peter D. Jones. Sydney. 5 January 1978
