Mark Peterson’s Story about the early days of Shamballa
1976 My Year at Boggy Creek, Bellingen
I arrived at Boggy Creek turn off on the Bellingen to Thora road on 4th January, 1976.I had hitch hiked up from Wyong on the central coast. At age 24 years, I had no plans except to visit two blokes, Bob and Henry, whom I had met at an amateur bee keeper’s meeting in St Ives, Sydney, in the spring of 1975. “Just ask for the Boggy Creek people”, is what Bob had told me when I arrive in Bellingen.
It was late afternoon, humid and hot, when I walked the 3 kilometers up Boggy Creek road; over a small wooden bridge, past noisy dogs at a smoky timber mill and over a log causeway, up and up a winding pot-holed track into the heavily timbered forest. A clearing game in sight.
Central to the clearing on a small ridge was a dilapidated, two bedroom, grey weatherboard, fibro house with rusty corrugated iron roofing. A small timber veranda and steps extended on the north facing side of the house where weather boards and windows had been removed.
Large terrace vegetable gardens and a wire-netted chook yard were in front of the veranda. A couple of bedraggled bods, in shorts only, walked up to greet me.
“I remember you”, Bob said.
“Cup of tea, cup of tea!” he announced to the gum trees and all within listening.
“Very English!” I thought.
So we sat on the veranda enjoying “Lemon Grass” tea; my first encounter. Two sarong wearing and bare chested girls came up from the gardens carrying freshly picked produce of okra and banana capsicums.
I had come to the right place! 1976 was the best year of my life.
I never set out to be a “Hippie”; instead my feeling was one of a refugee from suburbia, a broken marriage, a failed university degree and the mad rat race.
With $500 in my Commonwealth bank account, saved from a year’s work as a builder’s labourer in 1975, I survived 1976 without relying on the dole. Amazing by today’s standards.
At the beginning of January 1976, Boggy Creek Farm, as it was called then, had a population of around twelve people. Expanding by two or three when visitors, like me, arrived. Somehow we squeezed in to the old diary man’s cottage and nearby shed, used as a workshop and pottery of sorts.
Henry slept in his shack on the hill behind the house. Another man, Carrie, occupied his grass hut. Random people slept in Oli’s teepee set in a lantana clearing nearby. Bob had started to build his geodesic dome, which I helped him complete and cover with silver sisalation paper.
Below our ridge of settlement were two winding tracks leading down to Boggy Creek which ran crystal clear water, except in flood time, over shallow rapids and into some large ponds. Shingle banks collected on the bends as Boggy Creek meandered by mossy glow worm caves. Rainforest trees arched over the creek. Sand paper figs dropped fruit into swirling eddies.
The surrounding forest had been logged in the 1950’s. Still some giant Flooded Gums stood proud over the forest canopy; parents of younger trees. To find native macadamia and guava trees was not uncommon. State Forestry and APM (Australian Paper Mills) managed all the surrounding forests.
A few remnant red cedar trees, interspersed with blackbuts, mahoganies, bloodwoods, white cedars and wattle had grown to substantial size since the 1950’s. Signs of those logging days could be found like the tangled rusty chains and cable used to haul logs down the valley to the mill. Occasionally, an ancient wheel rim from a bullock drawn timber jinker caught your foot during an exploratory ramble through the bush.
Wild life abounded: carpet and diamond snakes nearly a daily sighting. At one time we saw a fist sized snail and a one meter long earth worm. Spectacular bird life of all sorts were constant company. Wallabies raided the vege gardens, while goannas did their best to break into the chook yard!
When it rained, big green tree frogs created a 2 1/2 meters wide circle on the open ground by the house; croaking for all their worth and humping each other big time.
Within a day or two frothy white, black speckled, clusters of frog eggs floated on puddles of rain water.
It could be said the young people at Boggy Creek Farm made it a special place. Equally, Boggy Creek Farm helped make us the people we became. With no electricity, no phone and an exposed drop toilet in full view of our kitchen window I went through a small culture shock!
We took turns to cook evening meals; ate communally and lived very much in each other’s pockets. Activities were spontaneous, serving our needs to tend the vegetable gardens, chooks; and for me the two bee hives Bob had established in beautifully handmade boxes, painted brilliant white and elevated to waist height on posts. Bob taught me about the bees: one day to become my livelihood during the 1980’s as a commercial bee keeper.
Bell Treblecock taught me how to bake bread, scones and Swedish tea rings in the old Beacon Light fuel stove’s oven. Pam Bailey taught me how to make pumpernickel, mixing black strap molasses with flour, seeds of all sorts and other dried fruit ingredients. Placed in small aluminum canisters, the pumpernickel mixtures were steamed in a large copper tub, over an open fire for 3-4 fours. Pam sold her pumpernickel to the “Good Food Shop” in Bellingen.
You could say all our time was “spare time”, filled with music, dancing, frivolities, serious discussions and sometimes argument. All good fun for me. A rich experience. Some friendships became more intimate. Some relationships fractured.
Surrounding valleys, the Thora and Kalang, ran north to south from the Bellingen river. The “Horse Shoe” track, along the ridge tops, enclosed Boggy Creek’s catchment area. These adjoining valleys included pockets of other “Hippie” groups, “Freaks” and “Alternates”. Many of these folk, we counted as friends and made frequent visits to see them. One time, at “Die Happy” in the Thora valley, another “Bob and Mark” hosted a wild all night party. The air was heavy with dope smoke, magic mushrooms (gold tops) were passed around as Hors d’oeuvre. Some spaced out people had popped “Mandrake”, a sexually disinhibiting drug.
It was a mad night. Some university students had come down from Armidale. They got drunk and stoned like most of us. No fights to report. Quiet remarkable, given today’s social drugs like – “ice” and “Speed” – fermenting psychotic and violent behaviour.
Our 6 AM drive home in the “Blute”, Bob’s house painted blue 1962 Holden Ute, took eight of us back to Boggy. Bob was out of it and stoned, but I was sober; never drank or smoked, still don’t – a rarity in that culture.
Half way back to Boggy Creek I told Bob to stop and let me drive. He refused. So I told him if he didn’t stop I would drag him out of his seat and leave him on the road side. I meant it! He transformed immediately, and drove the rest of the journey home sedately.
As the weeks rolled by, a regular highlight was spending time at the “Good Food Shop” in Bellingen. Nearly every Saturday night we piled into the “Blute”, and journeyed to the “Good Food Shop” for an evening of music, fun and food.
The Hippies had arrived in town! We were different from the traditional conservative farmers and timber getting community. Some of us may have felt threatened. The police were definitely a threat for the dope growing specialists amongst us. Quite a few young adult children of pioneering Bellingen families had joined our ranks. Society in general was undergoing huge social changes. We, at Boggy Creek, without realizing it, were part of the experimental vanguard in lifestyle and value changes.
Certainly, us hippies and freaks were curious and appreciative about old basic skills needed in country life. I struck up good relations with local dairy farmers, banana farmers, the local mill workers and many more.
A group of old timers sat in the main street, Hyde Street, of Bellingen nearly every week day. They were hardened and worn out men with great conversation and warmth. We loved talking with them and they with us. We called them “The Benchers”.
The Bellingen pub gradually became a scene for us different groups to mix and relax in each other’s company. We understood the local council had great suspicions and prejudices against us. At one stage, the rumour was that the council had plans to dam Boggy Creek Valley! As 1976 proceeded, I realized divisions existed amongst the shareholders. I called Boggy Creek Farm the “unco-operative co-operative”. Three significant events remain fixed in my memory from 1976 on Boggy Creek farm.
We had a baby born, a boy, named Hoya, to Bell and Ross Treblecock (a talented artist) on 30thJanuary. Hoya was a young brother to Dharma aged 2 years.
Bell’s labour extended over the afternoon, with Hoya’s birth around dusk amidst candles and incense. A natural birth, but it took 2 1/2 hours for the afterbirth to come out; and only then with Bell squatting and gentle traction applied to the cord.
Even in those days, I knew delivering the afterbirth and hopefully no hemorrhaging were important: much celebration and joy around Hoya’s birth!
The second event for me was the arrival of 54 year old Henry Maizonnier, who was on a “commune crawl” up the north coast in order to relocate from his isolated and itinerant lifestyle as a commercial beekeeper in north western Victoria.
For all of May I was the only resident at Boggy. One Saturday morning I set out on Henry’s push bike (it had no brakes) to vote in town for a state election. Unable to stop as I careered down “Horror Hill”, I passed a middle aged bald man walking slowly up the track.
“G’Day”, I called out
“G’Day, mate”, he replied.
That was the start of a life long friendship. Henry Maizonnier stayed a few days before venturing north to check out other communes, like Tuntable Falls at Nimbin. By early June, Henry had returned to Boggy Creek and invited me to return to Victoria with him to learn more about beekeeping. This I did for about 4 weeks in mid-1976; hitch hiking back to Sydney to spend a month living on the veranda at “Killara”, a Sydney bolt hole of Boggy Creek sympathizers where I worked for a landscape gardener and accumulated some cash.
The third event was the 12 week building of Silvia’s house with Bob Philips up until early December. A Gypsy moth caterpillar plaque tested all of us. On contact, your skin became extremely itchy.
Bob, Silvia and me made a good team. Silvia paid Bob and me for our labour. By early December, Silvia and her two very young daughters, Alana and Gemma, moved in. This house with extensive additions by Warren still stands.
Council building standards and “Normal” inspections did not worry us too much. We thought being so far in the forest, no one would care.
The Diary I kept for 1976, reminds me of a sequel to a year living mostly at Boggy Creek and that was the “Down to Earth” alternative festival held at the Cotter dam near Canberra in early December.
Bob took Oli’s teepee to the festival where it became a focal point for Boggy Creekers and friends. I went to subsequent festivals at Bredbo, near Cooma, and French Island in Port Phillip Bay, Victoria.
By January, 1977, I had returned to Sydney to start a 3 year registered nursing certificate at Rachel Foster Hospital, Redfern, and RPAH in Camperdown. I had returned to the “Rat Race”. Only to return to the bush in 1980 for a 10 year stint as a commercial beekeeper.
From 1990, a 20 year career as a registered nurse followed. Bob, Silvia, Henry Field (German Henry) and I remain close friends. Henry Maizonnier passed away in 2015 at 93 years of age. He did settle at Boggy Creek on the adjoining property in 1998, bought by the original shareholders. Henry built himself a house and other houses on the property. He became an identity widely known and loved as “French Henry”.
In contrast to the straight world I left and then returned to, 1976 at Boggy Creek was a year of little responsibility and great freedom to try alternative lifestyles. The “Green Movement” grew out of changed consciousness in people like us at Bobby Creek. Likewise, some people found Boggy Creek a crucible for religious/spiritual change in the form of Transcendental Meditation (TM) and born again Christianity.
For me, the love of the bush, sharing a common humanity with a diverse group of people and a heightened appreciation of nature remain with me
Silvia’s House, with nappies on the line
1979, Silvia has moved into her town house in Bellingen
Henry Maizonnier’s House
Kerry, Mark’s father, and Mark; with Bob’s Dome
Silvia and Brian Childs, at Kalang
Mark lighting his bee smoker
Michelle on Henry’s veranda
Mark’s father Kerry, grandmother Ruby and Mark, next to Silvia’s house.
Ian, Mark, Craig and David Peterson at Killara, July 1976
Henry Maizonnier and Mark
Mark with his visiting mother, Mary, on the old house veranda.
Roger Garlic and partner at Bredbo
Carrie and Mark and beehive
Mark and his sign at causeway
