Commune: Chasing a Utopian Dream in Aotearoa

"In 1979, teenager Olive Jones was one of a group of hippies, idealists, and subsistence farmers that set up an alternative community on a farm in the Motueka Valley near Nelson. Influenced by the countercultural movement sweeping the country during the 1970s and 80s, they were part of a movement interested in communal living, a generation of young people inspired to reject mainstream culture. These experiments were an attempt to achieve social, sexual and physical liberation from the uptight world they grew up in. Commune documents the rise and fall of the Graham Downs community. Achieving self-sufficiency was a hugely rewarding experience, using draft horses to carry out old-world methods of farming, building shelters by hand and growing enough food to support a fluctuating population of assorted hippies, spiritual seekers, freeloaders and dreamers. Ultimately, however, this unstructured community, without rules and membership, failed to fulfil the early vision. Olive Jones memoir recalls the dreams, the madness, the humour and hard work of living an alternative lifestyle, a wonderfully insightful and fascinating account of a very influential part of in New Zealands social history"--Back cover.