Gibber’s Creek Gazette, July 1973
Australia’s First Commune?
More than 1,200 acres have been purchased at Tuntable Falls to form the ‘Co-ordination Co-operative’, communal living, with multiple occupancy, and putting into practice all the May Manifesto ideals. Shares are still being offered to the public to be part of this idealistic venture . . .
SAM
Sam sat on his chair outside his cottage — a perfectly good cane chair he’d found at the dump and repaired, with cushions made from bright patches by Leafsong, as part of her thanks for his helping to get her café up to speed.
It was a good place to sit, to watch the river and the shadows change along the hills, the mist snaking down the gullies and the just-as-white smoke wriggling up into the blue from Jed’s chimney at Dribble. As long as he could see that smoke snake, he knew she was there and warm, and all was well.
This was a good place to think too.
He’d enjoyed the festival. No, more than that, it had been a deep vindication of everything he had felt but not been able to put into words, a meeting of people who shared his social ideas and, even more exciting, his fascination with the technology that these new ways of living needed. Appropriate technology that touched the earth gently rather than just made money for the manufacturer.
Tuntable Falls was just one of an uncounted number of old dairy properties being sold to the newcomers. It was obvious that the Nimbin region would soon become the capital of alternative Australia.
But Nimbin was a long way from Gibber’s Creek.
JohnandAnnie were talking of selling their share in Halfway to Eternity and heading up there. Clifford had simply not come back, just sent a note asking them to send his guitar — the one he had yet to learn to play — up to him, though offering no money to cover the postage.
It didn’t occur to Sam to do the same. Part of the reason was Halfway to Eternity, of course. He wanted to see the trees he’d planted grow, the paddocks watered with his hydraulic ram. Part was his deep familiarity with the wider community, knowing which of the three assistants at the chemist would sell you condoms and who refused to sell any contraceptives at all; knowing who made the best scones at a bring-a-plate bash. And partly it was the land itself.
It wasn’t just that he knew it. Loved it. He approved of it too. Things grew too easily at Nimbin, weeds like lantana as well as veg or fruit trees, with all the rain and deep volcanic soil. Which sounded good till you realised you had to work all year, every year, just to keep the growth in check.
At Gibber’s Creek there were six months of frozen wombat droppings clad in white frost whiskers when nothing grew and yes, a fair bit died as well, but at least you got those months off except for picking the odd cabbage or bunch of leeks.
Long winter months to put in composting toilets, to build, to yarn, to think. There were droughts too. Sam had only lived through one bad one, in the sixties. But he’d listened to old Matilda explain that droughts left the land stronger, the weak plants dying off, the brown leaves and dry branches rotting into soil so when it eventually rained new greenery would grow, the years’ accumulation of dried roo and wombat droppings holding the fertility as well as the microbes that replenished the soil once the skies began to weep once more.
Seasons: that was it. He liked seasons. And Nimbin had only one.
But, mostly, there was Jed.
Sam could have lived at Nimbin, because Gibber’s Creek would still be home for him, as long as he came back for visits. Even if he didn’t come back for twenty years, he’d still know the season just by glancing at the hills.
But Gibber’s Creek had only been Jed’s home for not quite five years. Enough for a girl with an enormous amount of space for love to find her peace there, to begin to watch the land and learn it. It was not just the Thompson family Jed needed at Gibber’s Creek, but a place she knew without question was her home. He would never try to take Jed away.
He’d gone gently. She liked him. Trusted him. Enjoyed his company, had delighted in building the chook palace with him, clearing and levelling a track for Scarlett to get to the river, loved the mock battles over the artistic merits — or not — of films like Alvin Purple and did being ‘made in Australia’ really make a difference to the way you felt about a book or film, and, if so, what exactly were you feeling?
Maybe there were seasons for love too. Traditionally, that meant spring, lambs clambering up on boulders to play ‘king of the rock’, birds nesting. Of course the mating for all that to happen needed to be in winter, but Sam had a feeling spring would work best with Jed.
Waiting for spring would give him a chance to work out the right romantic gesture too. Not chocolate and roses, because if Jed had been someone who could be wooed with the conventional, she wouldn’t be Jed. It had to be something big. Something that would change Jed’s world. Something that would make her realise that, just like a female lyrebird chooses the male with the best song and tail display, Sam was the man to give her exactly what she needed in a partner throughout her life.
Maybe if he walked along to the billabong an idea would come to him. Ideas did come, when you were walking or swimming or building an adobe wall, your body letting your mind work things out on its own. And that was something else Gibber’s Creek winters had. No bushflies in your eyes, no Great Australian Wave . . .
Ah. It was as if a mortise and tenon joint went ‘click’ inside his brain. Because he had just read an article in the CSIRO magazine that Neil, his mate from uni, sent him every month.
Sam grinned. He needed to ring Neil. And maybe . . . just maybe . . . by spring he’d have exactly what he needed to win Jed Kelly. A small miracle to change her world, and make her see she needed to share it with him.