Over the Australia Day weekend of January 1981, the Society held its first ConFest at Glenlyon on the Lodden River near Daylesford (Vic). Following the precedent set by the earlier events, the occasion attracted a diverse range of speakers and practitioners who regarded the event as a staging ground for their own agendas and visions. Some travelled to Glenlyon I to demand action. In a lecture he gave at the event, Barrie Griffiths chided participants:

It's not enough to be concerned, it's not enough to be aware ... we have to live it, we have to change the way we live, and we have to do it radically; we have to change our consumption patterns ... There is more to be done than coming together to talk and massage one another, and sing and dance and play music ... we have to create a whole new society, we have to reconstitute our battered environment, we have to create co-operative structures and learn how to function within them together. (Griffiths 1981:11)

He further entreated, '[l]et us make life a "Confest", and let's do it well'. In his nineties, sculptor, William Ricketts, came to share his enthusiasm for the nascent movement:

Down to Earth means just that; we have to live that, for the sake of the divine within ... I know now that I must join with you all in this great movement, as I've done here today, for the first time ... the Down to Earth movement must strengthen and unite .., until we have a fighting force that will tell those people in Parliament, just take your hands off what is left of this country. That's all. It belongs to God and it belongs to us; and we're not going to see it destroyed. (Ricketts 1981:2-3)

Clearly, the period remained charged with expectation, as was reflected in the theme for Glenlyon I: 'Welcoming and Exploring the New Age'. Though I will not become entangled in what would here be an unproductive discourse on the definition of 'New Age',31 the theme is significant. Resurrecting and renewing the momentum of the earlier, 'classical', period of DTE, the Society was keen to facilitate an event with a truly millenarian theme, an event which was to usher in nothing less than a 'New Age'. In the promotional build up to Glenlyon, such a 'New Age' was intended, for the most part, to be an approaching and enduring era (an emergent historical period) - an 'Age' which many would interpret via the vernacular of the popularly predicted 'Age of Aquarius'.32 Moreover, participants were called upon to collaborate in bringing it into being. A handbook distributed to ConFesters stated that 'the "New Age" is an event that simply does not just happen: it's made by people working together'. Participants entering the front gate were then provided literature informing them that a new era can be realised - given serious commitment on their part: 'We are re-charged to begin building the "New Age" when we return home' (White 1981:7).

*The Glenlyon I (1981) site mandala. According to the event's co-ordinators, Glenlyon's circular site inspired them to plan the ConFest 'on the principle of a mandala' (from White and Carter 1980:8).

Writing before the event, White and Carter (1980:8-9) proposed that Glenlyon I would generate an historical transformation of historical and religious significance. Here, the authors divine the impending period as the most recent in the succession of turning points in human history, 'decision points' bearing key philosophies and belief systems. So, following on the heels of Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, the Protestant Reformation and Materialism:

[w]e are at the threshold of major change ... Our age's turning point is close and what is apparent is that the choices for us are but two: a materialist competitive path, or a loving co-operative path. The forces of the former seem almost insurmountable, whereas the latter is virtually unknown, weak. But in the materialist path lies the seeds of its own destruction and the destruction of the entire planet, so powerful it has become ... A co-operative approach on the other hand ensures that people, whatever their glorious diversity, will work together to achieve some goal. The 'alternative' people who believe more in co-operation and self-sufficiency than in competition and submission are also linking up all across the world and their numbers are growing ... In Australia there are thousands who are espousing or interested in the co-operative path. They too are linking together. A ConFest is an event which enables people to get together, to see in each other the dawning and potential of a New Age. (ibid)

Therefore, it seems that the new era shall arrive so long as enough people choose the alternative, 'the co-operative path'. Yet, considering the 'New Age' to be synonymous with a new historical era remains conjectural as DTE had never produced any substantive documentation on this 'New Age', and how ConFest may have realised any permanent condition/era under this mantle remains unclear. But White and Carter go on to make a most revealing proclamation: that '[i]n a few days the people who come to a ConFest create their own new age' (White and Carter 1980:9). Though an aside to the general thrust of the narrative, this comment conveys, quite presciently, the logic and design of the future event, and the meaning that ConFest holds for many current participants: that is, the potential it harbours for the realisation of an unparalleled - in the lives of its participants - sense of transcendence. The aside represents a far more accurate rendering of the reality of ConFest, since it - rather than procuring lasting transformations comparable to the emergence of Christianity, Islam or Buddhism! - forecasts the reputation for immediatism and possibility for change (on personal and social levels) that this liminal landscape, this periodic threshold, has come to hold.

Schmidt (in the circa 1979 document) made a point of stressing continuity with DTE's initial period. He went on to remark that the Society would not seek revolutionary change: '[c]ollectively we are aware that revolutions have, till now, not achieved much in the way of long lasting or globally acceptable changes. Mainly because force was used, force by the use of weapons, economics or group pressure'. A further comment represents a succinct depiction of the direction DTE had taken: 'For people who are searching for a new lifestyle, DTE can be the vehicle through which they can come to a satisfactory solution'. Rather than dragging out the tiresome 'new society' proposition, I feel Schmidt's statement accurately conveys the emergent rationale of the Co-operative, and moreover, the purpose of its 'product', ConFest. It was not the unobtainable and utopian 'new society' but 'a new lifestyle' that would now become desirable. And the intimation of possibility in the comment 'DTE can be the vehicle' connotes the logic of its progeny, a temporal process through which alternative lifestyle(s) are sought, performed, consumed and discovered by way of diet, clothing, sexuality, art, spirituality and politics - all exchanged, contested and lived on site. The shift is consistent with that identified by alternative movement commentators as 'revolution by lifestyle' (Rigby in Metcalf 1986:81). There would be no more prophets and pedagogues 'uniting the masses' with manifestos, nor 'oracles' about 'military-industrial monstrous tentacles'. DTE no longer promoted 'the great transformation'. ConFest would no longer usher in 'the New Age'. Such pretensions evaporated. ConFest had become, in this second phase, a DiY event: a multi-dimensional experiment in alternative living.

ConFest's capacity to impact the post and inter-ConFest world came to depend largely upon the periodical adherence to a co-operative ethos. The idea was that if people, mostly strangers to one another, could converge for a week at an isolated location in a social environment of their own creation - a community with few agents of control and coercion (e.g. police, hired security, TVs), shared responsibilities (e.g. child minding, waste management, community safety, site maintenance), voluntary work, free education (workshops) and acceptance of difference and individual needs - then this would demonstrate to the participants themselves what could be achieved in the wider social field, in their neighbourhoods, communities, places of work, that 'the DTE spirit of co-operation' could be taken home.

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