Mullumbimby, NSW: Australia's 'anti-vaccination capital' doesn't deserve your hate

If you've been reading the news about Mullumbimby lately, you'd think the locals all have two heads and pitchforks and breathe fire at you as you walk down its main street.

Mullumbimby's famous these days as Australia's anti-vaxxer capital - where shops flout COVID-19 regulations on wearing masks. A story in the Sydney Morning Herald two weeks ago said local politicians were too scared to challenge them. Depending on your viewpoint, you probably hate Mullumbimby more than any other town in Australia. I know I would. Except for one thing: I'm from there.

The only thing Mullumbimby was famous for when I was a kid was winning Australia's Tidy Town competition. That hardly made the front pages. And then there's its rugby league team, the Mullum Giants, one of the oldest rugby league clubs still competing in Australia.

Footy always had a big place in the heart of any Mullum local. Home games on Sundays were the town's regular social occasion, the team hadn't won a premiership since 1960 - each year was going to be the year. Saturday's Moonshiner games (the town's union team) attracted almost as big a crowd.

There were counter-culturists back then too, plenty of them, but everyone got along. They were a colourful lot, they looked like they went to a Led Zeppelin concert around 1971 and never went home. They'd only come to town for supplies (the things they couldn't grow) and for cups of herbal tea at everyone's favourite café, The Popular. They'd clear out as quickly as they came – back to the hills they lived in. There were more communes and bizarre multiple occupancy arrangements up there than there were in all of California.

At the local high school students tended to fit into one of two sub-groups: (1) kids of the hippies from the hills, whose parents didn't have jobs, or (2) town kids whose parents worked trades. Considering how radically different our home lives were, it's a wonder we got on at all. But we did, famously, for decades after we graduated, we'd band together across the world, bonded by our childhood. The community rallied round worthy causes and families in crisis; no-one had much money, but no-one went without. If crime existed, it was only someone growing their own supply. We had front row seats watching our mates' parents get busted for the weed they had in the glove box at random police checks when they dropped their kids off at school.

A lot of us moved away when we finished school as country kids do: to university in the big smoke, or further, to see the world. But we still called Mullum home, no matter how far we wandered, or how long it'd take before we went back. Probably because Mullum never really changed. Stewart's Menswear on the main street was still where kids went to hire suits for their formals, the Middle Pub had the cheapest beers in town and Sunday footy was still the highlight of anyone's social calendar, especially when the team finally won the premiership in 2004.