Articles/Letters
Waiting out the last convulsion of a dying dynasty The last rivulets of sun have drained from the street and are replaced by a tide of colours as the street lights and the MardiGrass people turn on. Smiles flash from the swirling crowd, and the fashions are more neon than the shop signs. The crowd swirls around my table on the footpath like a rainbow stream around a rock. Familiar faces nod to me from the current as they’re
swept by. Sometimes a person detaches from the stream to talk to me. They speak loudly over the street drumming, the reggae from the park, the community announcements, and the general hubbub of humanity. Friday night at MardiGrass. I love it. In an improving world, it would be the last MardiGrass ever. MardiGrass was created 25 years ago to protest the harmful drug laws in this state by hosting a protest
continued from page 12 running a lean operation using an economical four-seat fixed-wing aircraft, we did fewer than 200 landings per year – not even one a day. Yes, mostly from joyflights but with other flights such as aerial survey, fire spotting, charters elsewhere and so on included. Helicopters are expensive to buy, operate, maintain, crew and insure. Any rational helicopter joyflight operator setting up at Tyagarah and using correct costings and pricing and with the vagaries of weather thrown in would struggle to consistently average one joyflight a day, let
alone the six to eight being talked about. Welcome to reality, folks! I suggest this level of increased activity is not worthy of any of Council’s debating time. These comments do not apply to gyrocopters, which are a different breed and subject to different rules. Of great concern, however, and what appears to have been overlooked so far, is the message being sent to helicopter charter operators from elsewhere. Banning commercial operations at Tyagarah captures them, too. Is this the message Byron, a tourist town known internationally, wants continued on page 14
Story & image S Sorrensen
rally every year – until those laws were reformed. Then like Portugal, which decriminalised all drug use in 2001, harm to citizens would be reduced and health improved. Seems like a good idea. Reformation of drug laws is on its way, as inevitable as the demise of the coal industry. It’s only the Australian governments which resist social evolution, being completely rooted in yesteryear’s mire of corporate compromise and political pocketpissing. These governments will never do the right thing; they must be forced to by its citizens. MardiGrass is a resort to the third pillar of democracy: the right to protest. Protest is all we have left. I am at a long table on the footpath outside the Trattoria. My friends and I partake of the Italian food, the organic red wine, and the MardiGrass ambience. My co-diners are from outside Nimbin, but we are united in our appreciation of this event. A multicultural sea flows around us, the colour and diversity a visual symphony. If you’re a people watcher, and I am, this is heaven on a bud-
dha stick. But now and again a scowling knot of blue floats by, bloated with weaponry, searching for relevance. And pot. MardiGrass obviously scares the shit out of the state government and its police. The Public Order & Riot Squad is here. (Yes, really.) Their presence, like their name, is confusing: Make up your mind, boys – public order or riot; you can’t have both. Like the election of Trump, the intimidation of
Nimbin is the last convulsion of a dying dynasty: the rule of money. The police, puppets of this ridiculousness, are uncomfortable here. It’s hard to be an enforcer of an absurd concept – MardiGrass is a threat to society – when the pleasant rub of humanity around you kindles your own humanness, and shows you it ain’t. So the police huddle together, the group reinforcing its copness in order to maintain focus on its mission. But it’s hard to create a riot at MardiGrass...
Near me, a woman with a microphone talks to a man with a marijuana-leaf headdress and green undies, a cameraman filming. Yes, journalists may pop in for an hour or so for a photo opportunity, the stereotypical story already written, but we at this table appreciate the larger narrative, the bigger picture. When some democratic accountability has been forced onto the government by its citizens and the drug laws are reformed, MardiGrass’s job will be done – maybe next year (times are changing fast) or the next, or the next. Whenever. Then the village can celebrate, without harrassment, the pioneering role it has had in creating and providing medicine, supporting textile and building innovation, freeing recreational cannabis users from the yoke of criminality, and invigorating democracy. My fellow diners and I raise our glasses to Nimbin. We thank you for your good work. Q See more of S’s work at
echo.net.au/here-and-now
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The Byron Shire Echo May 17, 2017 13