Australia's equivalent to the Woodstock Festival and the birthplace for Australia's hippie movement. During this time, festival-goers took part in workshops and discussions, swam and walked around in the nude, smoked dope, listened to music, and talked about new social experiments. Most were students from the major campuses in Sydney, Brisbane, Canberra and Melbourne.
At the end of the festival, a meeting was held to discuss an on-going commitment to the spirit of the festival. This resulted in the "May Manifesto" which contained many of the ideals and principles still espoused by the Nimbin community. It spoke of a "concentration of arts and artists", "survival on earth", "self sufficiency" on a "tribal basis", "living in harmony with the natural environment ", "participation rather than consumer entertainment", "no pre-arranged program of events" and "re-discovering the meaning that agricultural fairs once had for country people".
At the end of the festival, a meeting was held to discuss an on-going commitment to the spirit of the festival. This resulted in the "May Manifesto" which contained many of the ideals and principles still espoused by the Nimbin community. It spoke of a "concentration of arts and artists", "survival on earth", "self sufficiency" on a "tribal basis", "living in harmony with the natural environment ", "participation rather than consumer entertainment", "no pre-arranged program of events" and "re-discovering the meaning that agricultural fairs once had for country people".
The Festival and the May Manifesto eventually led to the formation of the well-known Tuntable Falls Community, still the largest commune in the area. As well as those who stayed on after the festival, others attracted to an alternative lifestyle eventually moved to the area, either buying land, joining existing communes or forming new ones. Other communes and cooperatives subsequently formed in the immediate vicinity of Nimbin or in adjacent valleys -- Billen Cliffs, Moondani, Blue Springs, Bodhi Farm, and Siddha Farm -- and from the mid-Seventies onwards, Nimbin became increasingly identified as a centre for the counterculture and the environmental and sustainable lifestyle movements in Australia.