On a cold winter’s morning, hanging out with my woollen slippers keeping me warm, I was suddenly tripping back to a year that was explosively fun with not a slipper in sight. This evocative throwback was prompted by reading about rolls of film that have been recently restored into a movie which is now being played at two movie theatres in Auckland.
It will take moviegoers back to an unrepeatable period of freedom. Though I wasn’t literally at this particular concert, I, the wannabe hippie, was there in spirit. While I was gaining my sea legs, hippies were listening to good music and sleeping under the stars. The three-day Nambassa Festival, held on a Waihī farm in 1979, is the subject of a recently restored documentary that beamed me back to simpler days. Literally to what Mick Jagger referred to as a time of sex, drugs and rock’n’roll.
It was a snapshot of Aotearoa at the end of an era, defined by a spirit of self-conscious innocence that the 1980s was about to stamp out. The footage showcases the essence of the seventies flower power counterculture had supposedly been about: great music, peaceful mass gatherings, alternative lifestyles, spiritual exploration and walking around public events topless. I was in awe of the openness of letting it all hang out during concerts.
Once, I even threatened I’d be a topless hippie; Mum’s laughter and a quick quip soon followed, “Who wants to see two poached eggs approaching them?” Made me walk away in a huff, never mentioning it again.
Compared to recent concerts, Nambassa was to attract the dizzying heights of 60,000 people, mostly hippies, who came for the music, which included a frenzied Split Enz, the Plague (wearing paint), Limbs dancers, and a yodelling John Hore-Grenell and prog rockers Schtung.
Unfortunately, the reason I never got to go to the Nambassa Festival was that I was working on a Sitmar Line cruise liner sailing around the Pacific Islands as an underpaid, overworked stewardess; what an experience it was.
The idea of being amongst it all, dancing in my long skirts, was a long-held dream dating back to when I displayed a large poster of Joe Cocker from the Woodstock festival on my bedroom wall until I left home.
The poster, naivety, and a few long skirts accompanied me as I headed to Auckland for the eye-opening adventures that didn’t break me; instead, they made me who I am, a woman in her late sixties with her feet firmly planted in the now. Who still plans to have future adventures and still loves getting out of her comfort zone, up to a certain extent and to put your mind at rest, it doesn’t include going topless.
Have a preview, as I’m sure it will bring back some memories for most of you?
Cover photo: Me on the lawn of our family home in Whakatane during the mid 1970s.
Life at No. 22 
Ahh the memories. No a rock concert but away from Wellington, at Uni in Christchurch, flatting with a bunch of mates and doing all the things my parents would be horrified at (except drugs – that was not my thing – the rebellion against the rebellion).
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Good on uni days filled with stories of rebellion 😉
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I can’t get the thought of poached eggs out of my head now!
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Haha, perhaps sing along to a Doobie Brothers number, it could help 😉
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I always like to think I would have enjoyed festivals like that – safe in the knowledge that now I will never have to put it to the test. In 1979 I was going back to being a student after a year out working – quite a different experience. And making the acquaintance of a certain engineering student who is sitting next to me right now.
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Meeting that engineering student did make 1979 a very good year for you. Oh, how we never realised that the student years were the easiest compared to working. Always in a hurry to “grow up” which for me occurred when I became a solo home owner with a cat in tow. The idea of doing that sort of concert isn’t on my to do list.
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Poached eggs! What a hoot. My mum used to call me a vagabanda, rebel that I was. Though I can’t recall going to a festival quite like that. Fun post, memories and nostalgia to boot.
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Mum was quite fast at stopping my wild spirit from spiralling. Every family needs a rebel 😉 Nambassa was pretty wild back then for a mainly conservative NZ.
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I was on the other side of the world
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Thought you might be.
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Topless on a beach is one thing, but I was never quite free spirit enough to jiggle about in public. And certainly not in the nippy north east, where I was at that time xx
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Yes, I was never that free spirited. It’s hilariously funny looking back at what I thought was “cool” x
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I was blessed being born just at the right time when everyone around me was a hippie. Then I lived in a farm commune in Vermont and we lived sex and drugs and rock’n roll. That was a great time, but it’s gone and that’s good so. Life goes on. I wouldn’t have missed this time. In many ways we were the avantgarde in design, art, leadership etc. We had our success and became members of the upper middle class with a touch of the unconventional.
Thanks
Klausbernd 🙂
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Living on the farm would’ve given you a different viewpoint of life than most. I, too, prefer life when I’m older, as there are more options because we made good decisions earlier on. Thanks for commenting.
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I always had yearnings to be a hippy but didn’t get much further than wearing long skirts! So this takes me back, though I think of it more as an early seventies ‘thing’. By 1979 we were all into punk over here!
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It was more of a thing earlier in the 1970s, though I was emphasising one of the 1979 concerts. The punk movement started here in the late seventies, though not as widespread as in the UK. It’s not something I could relate to. I never thought of wearing black until much later. It’s interesting that now there isn’t any distinction between “movements.”
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Can’t say I’ve ever heard of Nambassa, but an interesting video. Not quite as much of a mess as Woodstock. I do know the Split Enz (and later, Crowded House, one of my fave groups in the 80s).
Perfect mom response to your topless remark!!
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To be honest, I had forgotten about those concerts until the film was advertised. Yes, Mum had a quick wit and was very intelligent. Crowded House was a fabulous and popular band.
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I was more a child of the 80s so missed this crazy time. I loved going to Glastonbury in 2002, was very tame in comparison I bet! X
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I think Glastonbury would’ve been amazing to experience. We visited the township, and even on a quiet day, we could experience its quirkiness.
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