If these walls could talk…

Published on 01 December 2023

I guess I'm not the only one to speak this line to myself while pondering the many events that have taken place inside the Memorial Hall.

Oh, to have been a fly on the wall at the heated meeting between townsfolk and hippies back in 1977. The controversial gathering had been called to dismiss the Bellingen Community Centre management committee and pave a way to demolishing the building.

As it turns out, the Memorial Hall hasn't always been the centre of cultural activities in town. In the documentary The Promised Land, screened at the hall last month, we learnt how the old school house located where Council Chambers now stand, was a hub for community meals, concerts, dances and a Youth Support Scheme, where unemployed youth were taught "pottery, photography, motor mechanics and other skills. The library and health centre were there, too." (Adele Horin, The National Times.) The Community Centre was borne from a desire among the new, alternative settlers of the Bellingen valleys, to provide the types of services found wanting in the mainstream.

What Memorial Hall did witness on that night 46 years ago however, was a congregation of rate payers determined to oust the 'alternates' – hippie farmers who typically built their homes in the valleys beyond the bitumen, ie. beyond the reaches of council approvals and thus the payment of rates. In leveraging their technical upper hand – only ratepayers could vote – the irate townsfolk controlled both the discussion and the outcome at a meeting that people were reported to have referred to afterwards "with a shudder of revulsion". (Adele Horin)

At least the very existence of the hall allowed people to gather in a forum for discussion. Despite the sorry outcome of that particular assembly, without such facilities, there might have been even less understanding of the two sides’ viewpoints. Of course, the Memorial Hall's principal purpose is to host arts and performance, activities with the canny ability to sidestep and dissipate differences, allowing folks with otherwise opposed views to find common ground in shared experiences.

So, I guess if these walls could talk, they might say, "Enter open-minded, leave open-hearted”.