In the late Sixties and early Seventies, Margaret River was a place of refuge and retreat for hippies, surfers, political radicals and other habitues of the counter-culture.
To encourage people to move there, the West German government gave out stipends and exemptions from military service, so the city tended to attract the West's mavericks and oddballs — hippies, homosexuals, political renegades — who shared the town with the elderly and the soldiers watching over them.
This loose-jointed collection of reminiscences by several dozen people who lived on the ranch — hippies and political idealists who "moved there to get away from America," as one original member puts it — is crammed with pictures and old home movies.
The people drawn to the park were as different as the political sentiments they expressed: balding hippies, college students in jeans, lawyers in business suits and stiletto heels, women in veils.
A.A.E.I. is far more integrated into the political and media establishments than the hippies ever were.
This stereotype evolved in the last 30 years to include hippies and others whose political, moral or medical consciousness was formed by the ferment of the 1960's.
One does not often see hippies glued to the political news on TV.
The sides have swapped political turfs; the politically conservative industry and its supporters are standing for a strong central government, and the people they call a bunch of outsider, tree-hugging hippies want home rule -- local control and government devolution.
To them it isn't clear whether they live in a great political European capital, or a charming hippy town of pop-ups and clubs.
This isn't coming from hippies, or folks oversensitive to political correctness.
