1. Writing in 1985, Metcalf and Vanclay estimated that 95,000 Australians (1% of the population) planned to develop an 'alternative lifestyle', urban or rural (1985:2).
2. For example, see Armytage 1961, Cohn 1970, Kanter 1972, Abrams and McColloch 1976, Manuel and Manuel 1979, and Metcalf 1986:Ch.3.
3. Which, as McGregor (1975) pointed out, really means 'countercultures'.
4. When it is understood that utopian experiments are attractive to both those committed to their ideals and to those merely taking a short-term survival option - as the 'least undesirable of options available' (Metcalf 1986:116-17, 365) - their transitory character becomes all the more apparent.
5. It should be borne out that discussion of the collective behaviour and 'events' - uprisings, revolts, riots - of the oppositional movements of 'the South' (people's revolutionary or liberation armies etc) would be incompatible with the purpose of this thesis. The ACM is principally of the First World and is associated with lifestyles arising within the metropolitan centres of the democratised, post-industrial 'North'. Similarly, a discussion of the collective behaviour and events of the socialist left and its championed 'proletariat' - union formation, strikes and worker revolts - would also render this a different project. Though important cross-pollinations have occurred, this thesis does not address the labour movement or its events. I discuss oppositional cultural patterns and behaviours not necessarily directly related to subsistence.
6. In more recent times, communities of dissent have convened in cyber space. While cyber space might be described as one immense 'virtual event', I have in mind singular sites of convergence such as the AllChemical Virtual Powwow hosted by psychonaut Terence McKenna on 4/3/99.
7. Such moments have an intimate relationship with faires and markets. The medieval marketplace was, for Bakhtin (1968), an early seedbed of 'the carnivalesque'.
8. I have needed to make this point as the organisers of some 'alternative' events hold pecuniary interests. Therefore, some events (e.g. Australia's Earth Haven) may be, organisationally, only a short remove from 'mainstream' events.
9. Techno music possesses different styles (from exteme fast 'hardcore' or 'gabber' to the ambience of 'psy-trance' - often incorporating Goa Trance or Tribal music).
10. Melechi (1993:30) argues that British Acid House was born out of the attempt to 'relive the jouissance' experienced by tourist-ravers on the Spanish Balearic island of Ibiza.
11. In Australia, anarchic 'sound systems' like Vibe Tribe, Organarchy and Oms not Bombs, have appeared in the 1990s. The independent techno-bohemia, earthcore, is one of the principal outdoor dance party/festivals of the southern hemisphere.
12. In 1994, the Tory government legislated the notorious Criminal Justice Bill. The 'final solution' engineered by the New Right, the CJA constitutes a draconian system of police and legal powers which have 'almost decommissioned a lifestyle' (Dearling 1998:1). The Act includes clauses which criminalise squatting and trespassory assembly (including raves and free festivals not officially sanctioned, and, potentially, peaceful protests). It also repealed the 1968 Gypsy site legislation which obliged local authorities to provide sites for travellers.
13. Yet, by contrast to other ACEs, protests are more likely to attempt to secure the power of the corporate media to convey their protest message.
14. As 'powerful poetic gestures and effective political strategies' (Jordan 1998:151), various 'rave-derived' (Luckman 1998) events also possess political-activist significance (Rietveld 1998). This is especially apparent in Britain, given the criminalising effects of, and widespread responses to, the CJA. In Berlin, the annual LOVEPARADE is a massive occupation of the city's major thoroughfares. According to organisers, it is officially a 'political demonstration' - with participants (500,000 people in 1995) gathering to protest for peace (Richard and Kruger 1998:171).
15. Since they were free, there was no need for fencing or hired security.
16. Markets are themselves, as Henry (1994:299) points out, 'alternative events' since they are sites of informal sector work. What makes free festival markets, along with markets at sites like Kuranda, St Andrews near Melbourne and ConFest even more significant is that the majority of vendors reject formal sector work, consciously seeking economic alternatives. 'Marketing [Henry continues] is particularly attractive to "seekers of alternatives" because it offers the opportunity for self-employment and an associated autonomy of action which formal sector work does not provide' (ibid).
17. Often labelled 'New Age Travellers', they possess diverse commitments and practices. Some pursue spiritual and occultist practices, others have been outright hedonists, while others still are eco-radicals and anti-road activists (e.g. the Dongas Tribe). Following the CJA, Britain has experienced something of a traveller exodus - the new nomads declaring themselves 'world citizens ... [a] stateless tribe roaming through the European Union and beyond' (Dearling 1998:177).
18. As a 'community celebration', Aquarius received Federal Government funding via the Australia Council's newly established Community Arts Program (Hawkins 1993:42-3).
19. Both Aquarius and Cotter undoubtedly had some influence in New Zealand, where the Nambassa festivals occurred in 1978 and '79 (Broadley and Jones 1979).
20. Nimbin also hosts an annual celebration, the Nimbin Mardi Grass Fiesta.
21. Though there are inevitable cross-overs, these events should usually be differentiated from the specialised and explicit commercial orientation of events that are hallmark showcases of the 'New Age industry', such as a great many weekend 'retreats', 'intensives', 'workshops', 'funshops' and 'conferences' designed for the development of one's 'internal resources'. Also, gatherings, and ALEs in general, should not be confused with New Age exhibitions, fairs and expos operating since the late seventies and usually held in exhibition halls or show grounds.
22. These include the Homeland Festival of Peace and Healing (from 1985) at 'The Sanctuary' on the Bellinger River NSW, Ananda Marga's Ananda Mela (or Festival of Bliss) held near Stanthorp Qld (from the early eighties), the 'Renewing the Dreaming Camps' hosted by Yuin elder Guboo Ted Thomas, and the Healing Arts Festival held in Victoria in 1998. Gender-specific events like Lismore's Green Man, Circle of Men, or the Thora Men's Gathering, and The Wild and Wise Women's Festival in East Gippsland, along with pan-indigenous and inter-cultural events like The Global Village held near Townsville in 1996, and the Laura Aboriginal Dance and Culture Festival in Bellingen NSW, have also emerged. In New Zealand, in the early nineties, the Aotearoa Festival of Light at Tauhara, and The Gathering at Owhangu (1993) - originally a drug and alcohol free healing festival with a $250.00 cover charge, but evolving into that country's largest dance festival - became local manifestations.
23. Also called 'global media events' - 'publicly performed for, highly mediated through, and popularly consumed by global audiences' (Palmer 1998:267).
24. Yet, that which Hetherington claims for heterotopias, has long been known for public events, 'in' and 'through' which 'cultural order' is made (Handelman 1990).
25. A term used by Marin (1984), which Hetherington (1998b:138) describes as 'a spatial practice that seeks to make use of the marginality of certain sites to articulate ideas about alternative futures for society'.
26. Reference to Stonehenge and new travellers in his thesis have been published in several places (Hetherington 1992; 1996a; 1996b; 1998a).
27. As Turner's conceptual framework is examined at length in Chapter 2, I reserve elaboration of and commentary upon his concepts until then.
28. Work which began life as a PhD (1991).
29. Dead Heads were followers of The Grateful Dead, a band which went on a 'Tour' that, beginning in the sixties, spanned about three decades. 'Dead' concerts became spiritual gatherings for 'Dead Heads' (Sardiello 1994).
30. The chapter pursues a day in the life of 'Sunflower', 'an amalgam character'. Sunflower's experiences are, according to the author, 'real, based on both my field notes and stories Rainbows have shared with me'. The topography of Sunflower's gathering is also 'real' - being a combination of two separate National Gatherings (xi). Though the suggestion that Sunflower's experiences are both 'real', yet, at the same time 'fictional', may provoke criticism, given the researcher's own history of involvement, such an approach is warranted. Though idealised, it does provide an insightful introduction.
31. Apart from a brief reference to the ideas of Bey (Niman 1997:97).
32. That Event involved the 'victory of natural forces' (symbolised by a huge mobile Earth Mother figure) 'over the excesses of civilisation' (a twenty metre wooden skyscraper called the 'Tower of Babel'), which was eventually consumed in a conflagration of flames, fireworks and mortar rockets.
33. Made all the more probable as this is an annual event observed over several years, and since one of the authors was involved in its production and planning.