This extraordinary experience has led Rusty on an amazing journey,
from Nimbin to Israel, Rusty's C.D telling the story in words and
music has just been released, and a book is due for release soon.
CD The Earth Is To Be A Garden
AUD$19.95 including shipping worldwide
The C.D. tells the story of the Golden Babies - spirit entities that
are to be born into human bodies, but are too afraid to enter this
world in its present tumultuous state - they call for our help to
spread the message, "the earth is to be a garden".
Protest Stamps
Rusty has created a novel series of what he calls "Protest Stamps."
They are of course not legal tender which means you cannot legally
use them as postage stamps. However they are still very popular and
there have been reports of people using them successfully to send
mail. We leave it up to your imagination.
There are 3 stamps currently in the series. These stamps are
available only in single or multiple sheets of 30.
Free Green Bundjalung
1 Sheet of 50 cent Protest Stamps (30 stamps) AUD $15.00
including postage worldwide
Nimbin Australia
1 Sheet of $1 Protest Stamps (30 stamps) AUD $30.00 including
postage worldwide
The Earth is to be a Garden
1 Sheet of 50 cent Protest Stamps (30 stamps) AUD $15.00
including postage worldwide
Donations
Rusty of course will graciously accept any donations to his
wonderful cause.
If you'd like to help further his mission then just click on the
button below.
In this time of change and realisation of the fragility of our
world Rusty's message is timely and his passion for peace
inspirational.
For more information on Rusty please visit the following web site.
http://www.nimbinaustralia.com/rusty/
Living on the Edge of Prophecy
The most popular postcard sold in the
HEMP Embassy is a colour photo shot of Rusty's beautiful, prophet's
face smiling up to the heavens from amongst a bush of budding ganja.
The caption reads "Earth is to be a Garden." In two years Rusty has
sold 10,000 of these and international travellers bring us reports
of having seen it in such diverse places like on the dashboard of a
Budapest taxi cab.
Rusty lives on the edge of prophecy.
For over ten years now he has been getting UFO visits, inspired
dreams and messages from God. The key message and the life mission
that brought him to the Rainbow Region is: "Make the Earth a
garden". With Gitte his partner he created an organic garden
at Barkers Vale, brought in WWOOFers, grew herbs and vegies and,
with vast energy and commitment, sustained himself and his family
off the land, proudly without the dole.
Rusty looks and acts like a prophet. Black piercing eyes, dark skin,
huge mane and beard once black now streaked with grey, strong
upright bearing (he is an advanced Tai Kwon Do exponent) and wild
appearance, he is nothing if not arresting to the eye.
The darkest hours of the Battle of Timbarra were when Ross Mining
first occupied the Timbarra mining lease in August 1998. Government
agencies, police and the courts were aligned in favour of the mine,
the media were silent and the defenders of Timbarra had to rally
bodies to the top of a mountain at the beginning of winter in a
forest some 200 km from Nimbin. It was a time of deep despair.
David Mundine, spokesperson for the Tenterfield Bunjalungs who
contested the Native Title compensation, met Rusty at the September
Channon market and asked him to help. Rusty was up and into it, the
prophetic warrior was defending God's garden. He packed his video
camera into his 4WD, rallied his friends in Nimbin, literally
pulling them off Cullen Street, piling them in and charging off, a
man with a mission.
Into the Breech.
At Timbarra Mountain they found the
mine security were manning an illegal block on a public road leading
to the mine. Rusty, a former professional personal security provider
(Jimmy Barnes, Johnny Farnham, David Bowie etc), knew his law in
this regard. With the video camera to one eye and in the face of the
security, he demanded to know their names and licence numbers They
ignored his demands, radioed for the police and, preparing for his
arrest, attempted to confiscate his car keys. In the altercation
that followed two security were laid out.
The mine was determined to play tough at the perimeter and we know
now that Sandline-style mercenaries were hired. The identity of the
security personnel and their licences never were revealed even
though Rusty was subsequently charged with assault.
Rusty took another expedition to the mine to record the damage done
clearing the site and came upon a newly set up, welded-steel gate
across the public road, the concrete footings still wet. His crew of
12 threw themselves at the gate in a fury. They bashed it, hacked at
it with saws, and tugged at it with the 4WD while the mine security
looked on. To everyone's amazement, the gate gave way and Rusty
dragged it away down the hill and dumped it.
Later that day Rusty trekked through the bush, entered the mine
perimeter, videoed the destruction and drove the tape to Lismore.
Prime TV and NBN broadcast the pictures and so the first TV news of
the resistance hit the screens.
From that moment Rusty and his crew were marked men and women. The
mine in complicity with the Glenn Innes Police Command and local
redneck land owners planned an operation to teach them a lesson in
terror.
Entrapment
The Police told Rusty and other
protesters that they wanted a meeting on the Timbarra Mountain on
the next Monday, 19 October, to negotiate the conduct of the
protest. The meeting was a ruse. When Rusty returned to the mountain
on the Monday carrying food, warm clothes and blankets (many had
come poorly prepared for the conditions), he found the road to the
mine blocked by felled trees.
He estimates that he and his crew cut through at least thirty felled
trees with the chain saw he was carrying - all the time frantic with
worry about the safety of his friends cut off on the mountain top.
He had good cause to worry because, at the time, the police were
attacking the protesters on the mountain with batons. When the chain
saw had become blunt and useless, Rusty and crew noticed that trees
were being felled across the road down behind them.
It was a trap. An ambush!
They went at once to confront the tree fellers, Rusty leading, young
Hawk beside and Peter Pumpkin with a video camera to his eye. The
six tree fellers attacked Rusty and Hawk with clubs, fists and boots
and flogged them.
Rusty was hit over the head and beaten to a squatting position. He
remembers thinking that if he didn't rise he would be dead. His hand
grasped a small sapling at his side and he rose wrenching it, and
his life, out of the Earth. This fierce eruption of spirit and the
swing of the sapling surprised the attackers. Rusty watched, as if
in slow motion, the arch of the living green in the sky, watched his
hand let it go and, in a single motion, come down and bring out, and
up, his bush knife. "Now your turn, bastards!", he exclaimed. The
attackers fled.
Rusty was badly bruised, a big lump on his head. Young Hawk was
seriously injured with ruptured guts and then complications in
surgery. It has been a slow recovery for him.
Turning Point
This attack turned the tide on the
miners. The TV news, the front page photos and the home videos with
the raw facts from the front demonstrated that this was the place to
be if one wanted to defend the Earth. From this point on resistance
at the perimeter grew and grew. Green organisations in Sydney were
soon taking bus loads to the action. The National Union of Students
backed it and the lead national conservation organisations like the
ACF, identified Timbarra as a green action of national significance,
up there with Jabiluka.
The Glen Innes Command Police backed away from the fascist tactics.
I heard a story of one officer, faced with video evidence and
ombudsman's questions to answer, personally apologising to the
protesters, tears in his eyes. Such is the power of non-violent
witness.
After the bashing and the court cases (Rusty was charged with
assault on the security guards but no charges have yet been laid
against his assailants), he was prevented by bail conditions from
returning to Timbarra. He had to watch the big Timbarra Festival
Rally on video. He wept when he saw fellow eco-warrior, Lawrence,
who was also on a bail restraining order, rescued from arrest by a
determined tug-o-war by the crowd.
Soon after, Rusty got another divine message, from a host of "golden
babies" this time, to go to Israel and tell his story.
Feted in Israel
He used the money from his postcards
to pay for his fares to Israel and packed one small shoulder bag
which included 2000 postcards to use as business cards and to sell
on the journey.
In Israel, land of the prophets, land of rocks yearning to become a
garden, he was feted, first at a UFO conference, then at the
Shantipi Music Festival - a 4 day music festival outside of Tel
Aviv. (Byron band, Kangaroo Moon, was there and blew the crowd
away). He spoke from the main stage to 25,000 people and sang the
Timbarra song; "We love our mother earth/For what she's really
worth./The story should be told/That water is more precious than
gold."
The crowd, a vast sea of youthful idealism, received his spirit.
Rusty recalls that when he came down from that stage people from all
over the planet came and embraced him as a brother. A trail to
Nimbin is now being beaten by young Israelis who come seeking Rusty.
So he was passed from host to host, guru to guru, in Israel and
taken to the Wailing Wall. He told me he felt it vibrate against his
forehead as he invoked the fierce Hebrew God to save Timbarra.
Big magic was aligned against Ross Mining and it was stuck, caught
by its arrogance and greed, between a rock and hard place.
Haemorrhaging legal and security costs, dogged by start-up delays
caused by the extended rains and all the while the price of gold
plummeting. On the Sydney Stock Exchange, Ross Mining shares dropped
from $2.80 to 43 cents over two years.
The defeat represents a great victory for people power in the
Rainbow Region, for Native Title, for the Earth First-ers, for the
trees and clean water. The victory is also a watershed in watershed
politics and bioregionalism.
All praise to the courage and great love of the Timbarra warriors.
All praise to those who stand by them for the strain on the family
of heroes is huge.
Rusty's partner Gitte held the garden and the family together (two
small boys with Rusty's energy!) while Rusty took off in the family
car, risked his life, blew the family savings on saving the Earth,
and followed his prophetic passions. Gitte grew more thin, stressed
and neglected as Rusty grew inflated with spirit. Crash! in the
desert went Rusty when he got the message esp.
He rushed home and, when the news of Ross Mining's capitulation
arrived, he was busy cultivating the home garden. Neglect of the
home garden is one of the strains and hazards of social action. The
garden of the heart is the most important garden we ever have.
written by
Graeme Dunstan
15 September 1999
Donations
If you'd like to help further his mission by giving a donation then just click on the
button below.
