Free the Drums rally, Mullumbimby, August 2007
Image: © Graeme Batterbury

Keep the Vibe Alive

Last year I gathered up my small brood and moved them from the suburban enclaves of Byron to a bustling vital and slightly demented country town that has all the North Coast colour that the Bay now sadly lacks: Mullumbimby. It’s like dairy farm meets Newtown, with agricultural supply stores nestled amongst rainbow crystal healing colonic gluten free flag shops. Even the homeless man I saw rolling his own and drinking from a paper bag in the park was reading ‘The Peaceful Warrior.’

Commercialism, rampaging real estate ratbags and the self-focused nouveau riche have branded Byron with values that have bleached culture and community from the town as surely as blue green algae has destroyed The Barrier Reef. I still love Byron, but in the way you love someone for the essence of who they once were, not what they are now. Loving Byron is like being petulant My Space party outlaw Corey Delaney’s Mum and Dad, a curious mix of shame and public titillation.

Apparently no one cares anymore. We’re too busy being fabulous and rich to notice the plight of anyone else... but we are environmentalists, we have four cars, a dishwasher, an infinity pool with a 24 hour water feature, a 1000 square metre house for three people, but hey, we’ve got a worm farm and once a month a direct deposit that goes to Greenpeace.

Right here on the North Coast we are facing something much more sinister. I call it: Vibe Kill. It’s a pattern established worldwide. Creative, bent and cutting edge communities create a vibe. Only the poor know how to create a good vibe like that; it’s because they’ve got nothing fucking else. The vibe creates a sensation of excitement and vitality. Suddenly a shitty suburb or sleepy beach community has an energy about it that can’t be articulated: it’s just that when you are there, you feel more alive than ever before.

That’s when money moves in. Money has no vibe. It’s lonely. It has everything and nothing at the same time. It wants to be where the vibe is. So it moves in. It’s the creativity killer, the aching pit that can never be filled. The increase in real estate value is in direct proportion to the decrease in vibe. Byron’s vibe needs to be heritage listed, because there’s only a remnant left. We need to create a vibe corridor maintained by the long-term unemployed on a Work for the Vibe project. Vibe eradication creates damaging culture change, resulting in Global Boring.

Right now Mullumbimby, one of the most crucial vibe seeding areas on the North Coast is at risk of total and absolute vibe eradication. A multinational franchise, a well-known vibe crusher, is moving in. A decade from now, if the vibe destruction continues at the current rate, it’s projected that there will be no vibe left. Just a coastal community awash with groceries. I urge the people, the keepers of the vibe, to fight fire with firesticks and preserve our North Coast ethos. We are (or used to be) an alternative, conscious, thinking pro-active people.

This is a call to tattooed arms, so our children, and our children’s children will also know what it’s like to live in a community with heart. A village with vibe.

Mandy Nolan, comic and journalist, Mullumbimby, 2008