The Lemur Accord

One of the members of the "Star Earth Sanctuary" and her teepee.

“Yeah, just google the Lima Accords. Yeah, L-I-M-A, like the city. It was in, oh, I reckon, the seventies that all the big countries got together and decided that Japan was gonna make the cars, Australia was gonna do tourism and mining, China was gonna do the industry, and all that. America, too, but I can’t remember what they were gonna do…” the man trailed off. I had been listening to him talk about various hippie conspiracy theories for about half an hour now.

He does not have dreadlocks, but he is playing a guitar with scraggly ponytail and a short, geometrically inspired beard. Behind him, an odd mixture of stoners and uptight family vacationers from the coast coexist in a free municipal swimming pool. It seems that access to a place to swim is a universal human right in Australia. I am in Nimbin, Australia’s answer to Humboldt County, California enjoying a picnic by the pool with my friends and anyone else who shows up to the picnic table.

His friend, Frank, reminds me physically of my own good friend, Frank. I first saw him in the park and swimming pool and I thought he was perhaps a county authority making sure the tourism wasn’t getting too out of hand. He had on unironic camouflage pants and had a rare short hairstyle, almost a crew cut that one doesn’t usually encounter in a drum circle. Even his mood and mannerisms remind me of Colorado Frank as he is considerate of other people, doesn’t interrupt or spout on when you aren’t listening anymore like most others in attendance. I tell him of the resemblance and say that my friend Frank was a navy pilot when Australian Frank and the hippie go nuts. It turns out Aussie Frank was the youngest pilot in Australia when he was a kid, can you dig it?

That's right, we ended up staying with this crew and putting up a back porch with them.

Ten minutes go by and I overhear a younger hippie girl talking to Paula. She is midway through recounting a similar New World Order scheme to Paula that I have just heard from the hippie when, and I shit you not, I hear her say “…yeah, it’s called the Lemur Accords, like the animal. L-E-M-U-R, and it was, gee musta been around the time of.. aww, which one was it… I think maybe Abraham Lincoln when they all got together and decided they were going to…”
A long, rare, silent moment passes and finally she points to my jerry can and says, “is that creek water?”

I stare blankly, not knowing what to answer.

“Because if it is tap water, I can’t drink it and I would really like a drink right now.”

I tell here that it is, in fact tap water and she wanders off under a tree.