Nimbin is a town in the
Northern Rivers
Northern Rivers is the most northeasterly Regions of New South Wales, region of the Australian state of New South Wales, located between north of the state capital, Sydney, and encompasses the catchments and fertile valleys of the Clarence Ri ...
area of the
Australian state
The states and territories are the national subdivisions and second level of government of Australia. The states are partially sovereignty, sovereign, administrative divisions that are autonomous administrative division, self-governing polity, ...
of
New South Wales
New South Wales (commonly abbreviated as NSW) is a States and territories of Australia, state on the Eastern states of Australia, east coast of :Australia. It borders Queensland to the north, Victoria (state), Victoria to the south, and South ...
, approximately north of
Lismore, northeast of
Kyogle
Kyogle () is a town in the Northern Rivers region of northern New South Wales, Australia. It falls within the Local government in Australia, local government area of Kyogle Council. At the 2016 Australian census, 2016 census, Kyogle had a popu ...
, and west of
Byron Bay.
Nimbin is notable for the prominence of its environmental initiatives such as
permaculture
Permaculture is an approach to land management and settlement design that adopts arrangements observed in flourishing natural ecosystems. It includes a set of design principles derived using Systems theory, whole-systems thinking. It applies t ...
,
sustainability
Sustainability is a social goal for people to co-exist on Earth over a long period of time. Definitions of this term are disputed and have varied with literature, context, and time. Sustainability usually has three dimensions (or pillars): env ...
, and self-sufficiency, as well as the
cannabis
''Cannabis'' () is a genus of flowering plants in the family Cannabaceae that is widely accepted as being indigenous to and originating from the continent of Asia. However, the number of species is disputed, with as many as three species be ...
counterculture
A counterculture is a culture whose values and norms of behavior differ substantially from those of mainstream society, sometimes diametrically opposed to mainstream cultural mores.Eric Donald Hirsch. ''The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy''. Ho ...
. Writer Austin Pick described his initial impressions of the village this way: "It is as if a smoky avenue of Amsterdam has been placed in the middle of the mountains behind frontier-style building facades. ... Nimbin is a strange place indeed."
Nimbin has been described in literature and mainstream media as 'the drug capital of Australia', 'a
social experiment
A social experiment is a method of psychological or sociological research that observes people's reactions to certain situations or events. The experiment depends on a particular social approach where the main source of information is the parti ...
', and 'an escapist sub-culture'. Nimbin has become an icon in Australian cultural history, with many of the values first introduced there by the counterculture becoming part of modern Australian culture.
History

Nimbin and surrounding areas are part of what was known as the "Rainbow Region", which was of cultural importance to the
Indigenous Bundjalung people
The Bundjalung people, also spelled Bunjalung, Badjalang and Bandjalang, are Aboriginal Australians who are the original custodians of a region from around Grafton, New South Wales, Grafton in northern coastal New South Wales to Beaudesert, Que ...
. The name Nimbin comes from the local Whiyabul (Widgibal) clan, whose
Dreamtime
The Dreaming, also referred to as Dreamtime, is a term devised by early anthropologists to refer to a religio-cultural worldview attributed to Australian Aboriginal religion and mythology, Australian Aboriginal mythology. It was originally u ...
speaks of the Nimbinjee spirit people protecting the area.
Forests of
red cedar first attracted
loggers to the area in the 1840s, but by the end of the century, most of the land had been cleared. With the cedar forests gone, Nimbin was subdivided in 1903, with the land turned over to
dairy farming
Dairy farming is a class of agriculture for the long-term production of milk, which is processed (either on the farm or at a dairy plant, either of which may be called a dairy) for the eventual sale of a dairy product. Dairy farming has a h ...
and growing bananas.
In the 1960s, the local dairy industry collapsed due to
recession
In economics, a recession is a business cycle contraction that occurs when there is a period of broad decline in economic activity. Recessions generally occur when there is a widespread drop in spending (an adverse demand shock). This may be tr ...
and Nimbin went into serious economic decline until 1973, when the
Aquarius Festival, a large gathering of university students, practitioners of alternative lifestyles, hippies, and party people, was held in the village.
The festival was the first event in Australia that sought permission for the use of land from
Aboriginal people and made a significant attempt at reconciliation. Since 1973, the area has been a haven for Australia's
counterculture
A counterculture is a culture whose values and norms of behavior differ substantially from those of mainstream society, sometimes diametrically opposed to mainstream cultural mores.Eric Donald Hirsch. ''The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy''. Ho ...
.
After the festival, hundreds of participants and festivalgoers remained in Nimbin to form
communes and other multiple-occupancy communities, in search of an "alternative lifestyle". Nimbin in fact made legal history for the first ever application of group title ownership of land in Australia. Since the Aquarius Festival, the region has attracted thousands of writers, artists, musicians, actors, environmentalists, and
permaculture
Permaculture is an approach to land management and settlement design that adopts arrangements observed in flourishing natural ecosystems. It includes a set of design principles derived using Systems theory, whole-systems thinking. It applies t ...
enthusiasts, as well as tourists and young families escaping city life.
[Nimbin History](_blank)
Lismore Tourism Guide
Interviews were conducted in 1992 documenting the alternative lifestyle movement of Northern NSW in the 1970s, focusing on the town of Nimbin and the 1973 Aquarius Festival. Interviewees discussed how they arrived in Nimbin, their efforts at organising the Aquarius Festival, and the lasting impact the festival had on the township.
Architect and
University of Sydney School of Architecture lecturer
Col James, along with many of his students, was involved in a project designing low-cost housing in Nimbin in the 1970s.
James promoted the idea of multiple occupancy (MO) homes, and this guide led to the flourishing of MOs in the
Northern Rivers
Northern Rivers is the most northeasterly Regions of New South Wales, region of the Australian state of New South Wales, located between north of the state capital, Sydney, and encompasses the catchments and fertile valleys of the Clarence Ri ...
region of New South Wales.
In 1979, the Nimbin community staged the "Battle for Terania Creek" to protect the remaining local rainforest. As a result, the New South Wales government imposed a "no rainforest logging" policy covering the entire state, the world's first government legislation to protect a rainforest.
Population decline
The population of Nimbin before the failure of the dairy industry in 1961 was 6,020. In the ,
Nimbin had a population of 352, compared to 321 in the .
The region's high rural population (35 percent of Lismore residents, according to the census) means that Nimbin services a surrounding rural area of about ten thousand people living within . Nimbin had the highest unemployment rate in the Lismore Local Government Area in 2006, at 18.1 percent.
Nimbin's population in the was 468.
The 2016 census published Nimbin's population as 319, with local services provided by the City of Lismore (its area containing 45,000 people).
Cannabis culture and MardiGrass

In New South Wales, the cultivation, possession, or sale of cannabis is punishable by law. In Nimbin, cannabis is openly bought, sold, and consumed.
The existence of a drug culture in Nimbin since 1973 has been accompanied by a prevalence of collective and public creativity: colourful and spiritually motivated art (including large paintings above shop awnings), music, poetry, craft, and fashion can all be seen on the main street. The town is known as a hotspot for alternative social activities, grassroots political discourse, and the espousal of naturalist, humanist, anarchist, feminist, libertarian, permissive, new-age, mystical, and radical social philosophies (which can all be seen as collective creative endeavours).
To rally for an end to the prohibition of
cannabis in Australia, Nimbin has held an annual
MardiGrass festival since 1993. On the first weekend with any part of it in May, thousands descend on Nimbin for cannabis-oriented fun and frivolity. Activities include: a Prohibition Protest Rally and Parade with the Ganja Faeries, the Nimbin Cannabis Cup, the Hemp Olympix, which includes the "Bong", "Throw'n'Yell", Joint Rolling, and the Grower's Iron Person event, where runners must first carry a sack of fertiliser, then a bucket of water, and finally "the crop", as a tribute to the difficulties faced by growers in the hills, and to show that cannabis users can be fit and healthy. At night, entertainment ranges from the Harvest Ball and Picker's Ball, rave
doof
A doof or bush doof is a type of outdoor dance party generally held in a remote country area, or outside a large city in surrounding bush or rainforest. Events referred to as ''doofs'' are now held worldwide and have built from a small set of ...
parties, to poetry and jazz in local cafes.
There are a number of shops in Nimbin geared towards cannabis culture.
* The Nimbin Hemp Embassy is a "soft entry point for drug information" and a shop selling anything to do with hemp, except cannabis itself.
* Clothing and natural skin products using
industrial hemp products.
* The Nimbin Hemp Bar used to allow patrons to smoke cannabis while enjoying fresh coffee and cake. In April 2008, the police announced their intention to close the Hemp Bar and Museum; landlords were sent letters to this effect. Rather than cause legal problems for their landlord, the Hemp Bar crew voluntarily closed their doors and moved out. The Hemp Bar reopened in 2009 as a coffee and hemp information centre, but smoking of cannabis is no longer encouraged.
* The Nimbin Museum was a collection of local artefacts, local art, and alternative culture open for viewing. The museum and two other buildings were destroyed in a fire on 13 August 2014.
Police intervention
The level of police intervention against drug trafficking has fluctuated over the years. In April 2008, a squad of 110 officers, six horses, and several police dogs conducted searches in a police operation. Several buildings were searched including the Hemp Embassy. Eight people were arrested, 72 people were issued cannabis cautions, and police seized of cannabis and cannabis cookies. The police sent letters to the Nimbin Museum and the Hemp Bar leaseholders indicating an intention to seek closure orders under the Restricted Premises Act of 1943 for the MardiGrass weekend.
The Restricted Premises Act allows for the closure of premises for three days and orders may be obtained weekly. The museum reopened with a new leaseholder while the Hemp Bar remained closed for eight months and reopened in January 2009.
CCTV cameras
A closed-circuit television camera is a type of surveillance camera that transmits video signals to a specific set of monitors or video recording devices, rather than broadcasting the video over public airwaves. The term "closed-circuit televisi ...
in the main street of Nimbin had pushed dealing off the streets and into the museum, and the Hemp Embassy had been requesting that police deal with the problem. Following the raids, Hemp Embassy volunteer Andrew Kavasilas commented: "This is a real slap in the face for people who would like to see other resources in town. We have been inviting the police to come down and sort out the dealing in the museum for years and this is their response. They could work with the community, but they're not interested." Many locals voiced their opposition to the police operation.
Following the operation, Richmond Police local area commander Superintendent Bruce Lyons vowed to "shut down the drug trade."
Accommodation and attractions
A wide variety of accommodations are available for visitors, from campgrounds and backpacker hostels, to bush cabins and hotels.
Nimbin has a police station, hospital and medical centre, lawyers, real estate agency, service station with NRMA accreditation, restaurants, cafes, and a pub. The pub has an in-house restaurant. There are a number of sporting clubs and the bowling club maintains licensed premises. The Nimbin Neighbourhood and Information Centre (NNIC), run by local volunteer residents, offers visitors guides, computers for internet use, a small
Centrelink office, legal advice, a nurse practitioner, a welfare worker, weekly soup kitchen in the adjacent park, and a publishing service for the local newspaper. Local attractions include the town hall, annual MardiGrass, markets, bands, walks to the mountains, and day-to-day activities from buskers to street stalls.
Other nearby attractions:
*
Nimbin Rocks, a series of jagged outcrops, solidified plugs left after the erosion of volcanic dykes and vents, and Blue Knob, which are both landmarks for the village.
*
Mount Warning (known to the Bundjalung people as Wollumbin, meaning 'cloud catcher') is about away. Named by James Cook as a maritime navigational indicator of dangerous offshore reefs, Mt. Warning's summit is the first part of mainland Australia to receive light from each sunrise. Mount Warning is the remaining centre plug of a caldera which, 23 million years ago, had a 100-kilometre (62 mi) diameter. Its height was 1,156 metres (3,793 ft), nearly twice the height of Mount Warning today. The summit of Mt. Warning can be climbed via a , five-hour return walk through forested slopes.
*
Nightcap National Park
The Nightcap National Park is a national park situated within the Nightcap Range in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales, Australia. The park was created in April 1983 and is situated north of . The park was established following cam ...
is one of the few remaining places to see the remnants of the
Big Scrub rainforest.
* There are local creeks, water holes, and rivers for swimming.
Media
The ''Nimbin Good Times'' is a free monthly
community newspaper
Community journalism is locally-oriented, professional news coverage that typically focuses on city neighborhoods, individual suburbs or small towns, rather than metropolitan, state, national or world news.
If it covers wider topics, community ...
, also distributed in Lismore,
Byron Bay, and some suburbs of
Brisbane
Brisbane ( ; ) is the List of Australian capital cities, capital and largest city of the States and territories of Australia, state of Queensland and the list of cities in Australia by population, third-most populous city in Australia, with a ...
and
Sydney
Sydney is the capital city of the States and territories of Australia, state of New South Wales and the List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city in Australia. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Syd ...
.
''Nimbin Zone Magazine'' is Nimbin's bi-monthly magazine, featuring creative and artistic people from the village and beyond.
The community radio station 2NIMFM offers an independent alternative media voice and plays a diverse range of music and programming in Japanese, German, and the
Bundjalung language.
Politics
Nimbin consistently delivers strong election results for progressive political parties. At the
2019 Australian federal election, the Greens topped the primary vote with 48%, followed by Labor at 29%, the Animal Justice Party with 9%, and the National Party, which won the wider seat of Page, with 6%. In the
2023 New South Wales election, Labor's
Janelle Saffin topped the vote in Nimbin, followed by the Greens candidate, with both polling more than six times the primary vote of the main conservative candidate from the Nationals.
Churches
* St Mark's Anglican Church – A stone in a gate pillar records: Dedicated – to the Glory of God – and in loving memory of – the gates to St Mark’s are dedicated to the memory of Ernest Andrew McClelland, who died aged 68 years in 1954. They were donated by the McClelland family of Nimbin.
* St Patrick's Catholic Church – This former church has been decommissioned and is now private property.
* St Stephen's Presbyterian Church – The current Presbyterian church was built in 1922. For 50 years, home missionaries served the parish until the congregation welcomed its first ordained minister in 1959.
*
Uniting Church – The former
Nimbin Methodist Church became a
Uniting Church in Australia
The Uniting Church in Australia (UCA) is a united church in Australia. The church was founded on 22 June 1977 when most Wiktionary:congregation, congregations of the Methodist Church of Australasia, about two-thirds of the Presbyterian Church o ...
parish with the
Basis of Union, when most congregations of the
Congregational Union of Australia
The Congregational Union of Australia was a Congregational church, Congregational Christian denomination, denomination in Australia that stemmed from the Congregational church, Congregational Church in England as settlers migrated from there to ...
, Methodist Church, and Presbyterian Church united in the 1970s. The building was designed and built by carpenter Eustace William Henry (Harry) Stanger (1875–1953). Stanger was born in
Bathurst, New South Wales
Bathurst () is a city in the Central Tablelands of New South Wales, Australia. Bathurst is about 200 kilometres (120 mi) west-northwest of Sydney and is the seat of the Bathurst Region, Bathurst Regional Council. Founded in 1815, Bathurst is ...
, and was educated at
Newington College
Newington College is a multi-campus Independent school, independent Uniting Church in Australia, Uniting Church Single-sex education, single-sex and Mixed-sex education, co-educational Pre-school education, early learning, Primary school, primar ...
. In 1910, he moved to Nimbin and lived there until his death. With J. W. Bagust, he established moving pictures in the town and showed them for over forty years. As a carpenter, he was associated with the construction of many timber buildings in Nimbin. He was a founding member of the Nimbin Methodist Church Trust, and served as a circuit steward. He was a member of the Loyal Orange Lodge, the first greenkeeper for the Nimbin Bowling Club, and president of the Nimbin Progress Association.
Transport
Nimbin is from
Lismore Airport, with flights several times daily to Sydney.
Northern River Buslines operates multiple services per weekday on route 650 to
Lismore.
Connecting Nimbin to Lismore
Northern River Buslines 1 June 2019
Gosel's Bus Service operates two services per weekday on route 630 to Murwillumbah, with connection to Tweed Heads.
There is also a school bus service available for the general public on school days to Kyogle.
Gallery
Colourful Nimbin-53+ (2362957535).jpg, One of Nimbin's many painted shopfronts, March 2008
Nimbin main street February 2014 (1).jpg, Nimbin main street, February 2014, showing appearance before the 2014 fire that destroyed several buildings.
Nimbin main street February 2014 (2).jpg, Nimbin main street, February 2014, showing appearance before the 2014 fire that destroyed several buildings.
Nimbin Shops-2 (10044022165).jpg, Shops in Nimbin, February 2013
Colourful Nimbin-39+ (2362949407).jpg, Street scene in Nimbin, March 2008
Colourful Nimbin-30+ (2361959535).jpg, Outside the former Nimbin Museum, March 2008
Inside Museum Nimbin-1 (10044020655).jpg, Inside the former Nimbin Museum, September 2023
Inside Museum Nimbin-2 (10045506243).jpg, Inside the former Nimbin Museum, September 2013
Colourful Nimbin-62+ (2369458511).jpg, Cafe scene in Nimbin, March 2008
Colourful Nimbin-52+ (2362954889).jpg, The Nimbin Hotel, March 2008
Colourful Nimbin-90+ (2370489676).jpg, One of Nimbin's several churches, March 2008
Colourful Nimbin-45+ (2362834988).jpg, Community garden entrance, March 2008
Colourful Nimbin-31+ (2362795870).jpg, Visitor and street art in Nimbin, March 2008
Nimbin 2017.jpg, Nimbin, April 2007
Nimbin_Village_Aerial.JPG, Nimbin, December 2005
Nimbin_Rocks.JPG, Nimbin Rocks, near Nimbin, December 2005
Welcometonimbin.jpg, Welcome sign to the village, January 2007
Nimbin Town2.jpg, Nimbin, September 2008
Nimbin Rocks in the Northern Rivers of NSW Australia.jpg, Nimbin Rocks in the Northern Rivers of NSW, May 2019
Nimbin Rocks close up in the morning sun in the Northern Rivers of NSW Australia.jpg, Nimbin Rocks, close-up in the morning sun, May 2019
Sister cities
* Woodstock
The Woodstock Music and Art Fair, commonly referred to as Woodstock, was a music festival held from August 15 to 18, 1969, on Max Yasgur's dairy farm in Bethel, New York, southwest of the town of Woodstock, New York, Woodstock. Billed as "a ...
, United States
* Tākaka
Tākaka is a small town situated at the southeastern end of Golden Bay / Mohua, Golden Bay, at the northern end of New Zealand's South Island, located on the lower reaches of the Tākaka River. State Highway 60 (New Zealand), State Highway 60 r ...
, New Zealand
* North Cave, England
* Freetown Christiania, Denmark
See also
* Nightcap National Park
The Nightcap National Park is a national park situated within the Nightcap Range in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales, Australia. The park was created in April 1983 and is situated north of . The park was established following cam ...
* Protected areas of New South Wales (Australia)
The Protected areas of New South Wales include both protected area, terrestrial and marine protected areas. there are 225 national parks in New South Wales. A number established since the late 1970s followed campaigns by local residents and ...
* ConFest, a long-running annual gathering
References
External links
Nimbin Web: community directory
Nimbin Australia: links & info
Nimbin MardiGrass official site
ABC News Australia: Nimbin news thread
Nimbin Heads: Hour-long documentary "snapshot" of Nimbin culture on YouTube
Northern Rivers geology blog – Nimbin
Nimbin Soundtrail audio walk
*
*
{{authority control
Towns in New South Wales
Northern Rivers
Cannabis culture
Cannabis in Australia
Counterculture communities
City of Lismore