“It attracted visionaries and prophets, pioneers, who could see the vision and knew how to work for it and also the people who wanted to be saved, people who were falling and wanted a new kind of community to live in.”

— Graeme Dunstan Aquarius Festival Director

In May 1973, 10,000 artists, activists, hippies, radical students, gurus and visionaries descended on a small dairy town for 10 days of social and cultural exploration that changed a generation.

Those 10 days birthed an irrepressible movement that may have been the much-needed blueprint for sustainable change.

When thousands of young people travelled the back roads of Northern New South Wales 50 years ago to camp and explore a new way of living at Nimbin Aquarius Festival something unexpected happened amongst all the bliss, drugs and drama.

Through extensive collaboration and hours of precious newly-uncovered footage, the film directs our gaze to the Festival – its inception and its aftermath - and examines the power of that one event to continue to shape history. Aquarius is about the constant struggle between the establishment and the alternative, between community and the individual.

Aquarius is a film about the people and the power of change, of unintended consequences and the radical wisdom that reaches down through generations today.

“Some people said this was our Woodstock, but it wasn’t. It was anti-Woodstock. We don’t want to pay to sit and watch rockstars, we want a festival where WE ARE THE PROGRAM.”

— JOHNNY ALLEN, AQUARIUS CULTURAL DIRECTOR

SYNOPSIS