Invasion of the hippies!

For the last month there has been a hippiefestival going on a little bit outside Springs Junction, about an hour away from here. The festval itself is an hours walk into the forest, next to the river, and as they say themselves and people I know who have gone for a bit, it's been full of love, peace and a lot of nudity. They have been coming to Murchison in big groups for the last month and have definetly spiced up our average days! You can usually tell the hippies from everyone else, they're the ones with the very colorful clothing, the long hair and pretty much everyone of them carries around an instrument of somekind and a flask or bottle that they got real cheap at a garage sale. In other words they look like they come straight from the 60's. Its been quite funny having them around the cafe, they have caused a bit of a ruckus at the pub because they smell so bad its apparantly hard to serve them. (they dont have showers at the camp, and they havent been too eager to take a shower either strangely enough. guess its festival/ hippie life). Another thing that comes with being a hippie is drugs, some of them I have no idea what were on, but I have never seen so many people be so fascinated over a cookie and eat it with such fufillment and determination!
Saturday was the last day of the festival and as an ending they had asked the Commercial pub if they could play there live for the night, in which the pub said yes! The poster only said "live band" and so us girlies and Regen thought it was some local countryband coming through and thought it would be a fun night at the 'ol commercial. Mutch to our surprise it was not, instead of the guitar and drums and cowboy hats there was long gowns, beards to the chest, a mandolin, a banjo and a flute and dreads everywhere. And about 30 hippies jumping around singing to their hearts content and dancing to a rythm i found hard to find. It was awesome! The commercial was pretty full after a while and The Hamptin found itself shutting early as most people decided to come over to "the darkside". It didn't take long before one of the hippies came over and asked if we wanted to dance, naturally I said yes and away we went! Apart from the bit sweaty smell, it was a very fun night. Dancing with the hippies most of the night and watching them sing along to songs I have never heard before, mostly about love and happiness (which is a nice break from the partying and prostitue- songs on the radio). After a while they all got together in three massive rings and stood humming the word "ah" together for a looong time before going "brrrr" shaking their hands and then oing a massive group hug piling on top of eachother on the floor. It was ofcourse all fun and games until the flying mokeys come out, and one flying monkey nocked into one of the senior hippies and hurt one of her many piercings, in which she had to spend the next hour in the bathroom with the aid of three other hippies. Too much love i guess.
I had a chat to a few of the hippies, one who was from Australia and was here with alle her girl-friends, and to be honest they are pretty cool people i think. Too much hairgrowth in my opinion, but very good people i'd say!
In the end, we got invited to the next rainbow festival (i know, very appropriate name!) next year and wished peace and love on our bodies.

The day after, they decided to come to Rivers Cafe to have a public concert outside for all our guests. It was all good until they decided to dance on the tables, in which other poeple were supposed to eat off of. Thats when Jude the boss saw red, marched out there and told (yelled) them: "HAVE SOME RESPECT!!". They were very sorry and got off the tables, but they spent the rest of the day, from 11 am to 4 pm outside the cafe singing and dancing to our amusment and Jude ended up giving them all a free meal. Some rednecks appeared and wanted us to tell the hippies to leave, so we told therednecks to leave instead. It was good and so much peace and love!
its like what they say, if you cant beat them, join them! Long live the hippie culture!