Accidental Mardi Grass

Littletree's friend, Ana stayed over last night, which was nice, the girls played a lot and had loads of fun.

The catch was that I had to drop Ana back to her mother, who was working at a market stall in a village about 40 minutes away. I was fine with that... till I got to the village, only to find that the "market" was actually the Nimbin Mardi Grass festival.

It's basically a huge crowd of people/ marijuana-enthusiasts/ tourists/ crazies and assorted riff-raff who flock to this small village to celebrate cannabis and peacefully demonstrate to end prohibition. You can read the wiki page here

I'm all for that, really, as long as I don't have to personally attend. I don't like crowds, or loud noise, and I don't smoke marijuana or particularly like hanging around with people who are.

I usually avoid the entire village of Nimbin, which is a crazy kind of place, where the 1973 Aquarius festival was held (kind of an Australian version of Woodstock). Only all the hippies stayed, and the village has become a kind of hippie museum unto itself - all the shops in the main street (even the butcher and grocery store) are painted psychedelic. It's just that kind of place.

I don't have a problem with it, it's just not my vibe. So I was slightly irritated when I drove into the midst of it, unsuspecting. Not to mention having to drive around crowds of stoned crazy people trying to find parking!

When we got there, I found my friend at her stall; she said business had been really slow and she'd hardly sold anything all day. Only while I was standing there chatting with her, it got really busy. So I became the official stall customer magnet, because of course I was (as usual) dressed all in green like the ganja fairies, and somehow ended up taking care of the stall for a while.

The girls had a little play on the Nimbin Sk8 Park

And finally I drove Littletree home.