Participants

Though accurate demographics are difficult to establish, with an average age in the early to mid 20s,3 and predominantly Euro-Australian, during the research period there are about 5-6,000 regular ConFesters: a diverse amalgam of students and teachers, artists and scientists, accountants and anarchists, ferals and professionals, musicians, activists, crafts people and the unemployed. A great proportion of ConFest participants are tertiary educated, or as George commented, 'those who can afford the Hippie uniform'. The Melbourne suburbs of Fitzroy, St Kilda, Northcote, Brunswick and Sydney's Newtown are common sites of emigration. Here, the two components of the 'new middle class' - 'humanistic intellectuals' (those involved in the teaching, helping and personal service professions) and 'technical intelligentsia' (administration and technical experts like bureaucrats and scientists) (Gouldner 1979) - are present alongside 'decommodified' groups.4

Participants are predominantly, though not exclusively, middle class. Most identify with the ACM, participating in workshops, site work and performances. There is general consensus between participants in the need for tolerance and to be responsible in one's actions (see ConFest Ethos below). Such value requirements probably capture the essence of the 'like-mindedness' many survey respondents appreciated in their fellow ConFesters.

Tolerance, however, has its limits. Due to the high ratio of tertiary educated participants (especially in the Humanities), and the inevitable deep impressions effected by the feminist, ecology, peace, human rights and alternative health/spirituality movements, the majority of ConFesters sustain elements of a culture of critical discourse. Within this discourse, anything deemed 'natural' - 'organic', 'green', 'earthy', 'vego', 'folky' - is valorised, and to express one's commitment to such, via apparel, diet, music, courtship, childcare, and conversation, garners acceptance and respect. The identity of the alternative lifestyler is here revealed to be a DiY assemblage of desirable argot, icons and gestures. As practices which controvert the 'correct' critical discourse tend to be distasteful or offensive,5 practitioners - who may also be suspected of indulging in a range of other homologically 'incorrect' pursuits - may not be accorded respect.6

Marked variation in on-site behaviour is largely determined by differential motives and expectations - which are controlled by a participant's interpretation of the purpose of the event. One way to work through this is to investigate these expectations disclosed in the form of questions participants may arrive with. In fact, at a general level there is a rather extreme division of inquiry, a division which tends to reflect differential commitments to either of the Conferencing or Festival dimensions of ConFest. As Coquito suggests, for many, the central and pertinent questions remain: 'Where's the family? Where's the tribe? What are we doing for the planet? What can we do?' However, for a growing number of those participants who are primarily seeking hedonistic pleasures, 'Where's the party?' (sexual gratification and intoxicants) constitutes the leading question. New Year's Eve has become the prime time of the space invader - particularly young males from local and surrounding districts. For most such attendees, ConFest is pure spectacle, an event 'put on' for their entertainment, the entire affair approximating an exotic/erotic circus.7 Such participants are content as access to an informal drug economy, especially small scale trafficking in 'grams' (marijuana), 'trips' (LSD or 'acid') and 'e' (ecstasy), is never difficult.

Yet divisions are more complicated as there is, on the one hand, dissension over that which is believed to constitute the serious business of the event. And the disparity is made obvious by the presence of a miscellany of neo-tribes with which participants are affiliated (like Friends of the Earth, Spiral Dance, Church of all Worlds, Australian Nudist Federation, Food not Bombs, the Prostitutes Collective, Willing Workers On Organic Farms, The Vegan Society). On the other hand, there is considerable debate over the definition of a 'party' (e.g. between yobs, bikies, ravers and ferals). Furthermore, one person's serious pursuits are, for others, mere diversions.

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