How one hippie town became the anti-vaxxer capital of Australia

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Ground zero for this kind of thinking in Australia is Mullumbimby, where it’s best not to discuss it.

In 1995, after the end of what she calls an "unfortunate relationship", Eve Jeffery left her home in Myrtleford, north-east Victoria, with her two young children, hit the road in her yellow Kombi and drove north, to Byron Bay, on the far north coast of NSW. Back then, before the tourist boom that has subsequently swamped it, Byron was a quiet place, a counter-culture refuge with reliably great surf, a strong sense of community, and as much wholefood as you could eat.

Mullumbimby-based reporter Eve Jeffery: locals “go nuts” when vaccination is covered by the weekly paper: “It gets to the stage where we have to stop people threatening to kill one another.”one credited with saving hundreds of millions of lives worldwide.

"I've seen more vaccine-preventable diseases since working in the Northern Rivers than I saw in 10 years of working in remote Aboriginal communities," says Dr Rachel Heap, an intensive care specialist at Lismore Base Hospital, an hour's drive south-west of Byron Bay. In the past few years, the hospital has seen cases of rare and easily preventable diseases such as tetanus, diphtheria, mumps and epiglottitis.

The turning point, however – the region's rebirth, as it were – came in 1973, with the Aquarius Festival. Held over 10 days in May, the event drew some 5000 free-thinking individuals and alternative lifestylers to the fields around Nimbin, west of Mullumbimby, where they camped out, listened to music, got high and took their clothes off. Some liked it so much they stayed, setting up co-ops and communes and sowing the seeds for what would soon become Australia's counterculture capital.

Mullumbimby’s focus on alternative lifestyles and wellness draws tourists as well as tree-changing city-dwellers.In the Northern Rivers, however, even some doctors have become susceptible to anti-vaxxer sentiment. One morning in Mullumbimby I get talking to a cafe owner, a middle-aged woman who moved here from Sydney nine years ago with her parents."My dad had dementia and we wanted to get him out of the city, and my older brother was already living up here," she says.

Mullumbimby is meant to be a lovely, mellow, hippie town where everyone is so accepting. But people can eat you alive. , where I have an appointment in a cafe with a woman who I'll call Helen. Helen is in her mid-50s, with hazel eyes and honey-coloured hair, and an air of tranquillity so profound that she puts me immediately at ease, like a non-pharmaceutical calmative. Helen has brought to the cafe some reading material, books on natural mothering and the like. She says caring for her kids has always been the most important thing in her life. "I just wanted to be the best mum and wife I could be.

 

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the Hari Krishna and its teachings still have a very strong influence in this area and it is generational now.

Leftists

Obviously the centre of Australian Crackpottery is Mullumbimby?

Anti-vaxx & well-informed? Juxtaposition no? 'Some of [the anti-vaxxers] are nutcases, but many of them are very well informed.' She shrugs. 'It's a complex situation.'

I am 64 years old have never had a flue shot the last time I had the flue was1991. Since then no flue but a lot of old people get the shot the get a runny nose a tight chest aches and pain. They do not have a cold but a flue. How do I beleive the Chem. Comp.

'Thinking' is a charitable description

Brain dead

A lateral thread to a volatile topic: What are the rights of a child in the adult conversation of to vaccinate or not? The child who dies within 24 hours from meningococcal infection. Or loses their brain from pneumococcal disease has no rights.

As time goes by the non-vaxxed kids and adults will die from communicable diseases, so leaving the rest of us in peace. The abomination is that those kids/adults, who for medical reasons cannot be vaxxed, will die along with them. Non-vaxxers are very, very selfish murderers.

These parents just need to ask themselves one simple question: “Do I want my child to die from a preventable disease?”

Anti vaxx, but they don't mind ice lol.

Can we build a wall around this joint?

Yep the most progressive become the most regressive...soon they will be voting for Pauline Hanson, and they could Donald Trump.

Overheard in shop in Mullum today- the Chinese warships are here because of the 5G network being a Chinese product - and - 5G is like putting your head in a microwave oven - Mullum market has an anti-5G stall - we have the worst internet btw

Cut there centrelink payments,problem would disapear instantly...

European community of Australian citizens again? 5th or off the boat generation?

It’s a very colourful town but Beauty fades,stupid is forever

They are also against 5G

One place to avoid at all costs.

Stupid, selfish, and ignorant. Anti-vaxxers need to face consequences or their actions.

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