About Us

Co-ordination Co-operative is the largest multiple occupancy intentional community in Australia, and one of the first.

Our main landholdings total 1,700 acres and we have about 280 shareholders. Resident adult shareholders total about 120 and there are about 50 resident children who are shareholders. There are also about 20 resident non-shareholders and another 50 resident children. There are about 110 non-resident shareholders, some of whom hold or rent sites in the valley and some who are original members from the early days.

We began in late 1973, from the visions of young people who came to Nimbin for the Aquarius Festival and wanted to stay and live in this beautiful area.

Our Aims

Here are our stated aims, from the original charter of the Co-op:

“The objects of the society shall be to help set up and co-ordinate a new community of persons living and working together on common property, in a total creation environment of discovering, learning and perfecting modes of living, works of art, forms of communication, methods of awareness and skills of cultivation, craft and construction and sharing responsibility for the quality of all life.”

As a venture born of youthful 1970’s idealism, we have forged many new practices which are now emulated by mainstream society. We have also found our own unique problems, and our own unique solutions to them!

From a bare paddock with a few old farm buildings and a lot of naked hippies running around, the valley has grown into an extensively-planted established community with over eighty council-approved houses, a pre-school and primary school, and our own Community Centre, Community Hall and fire shed.

Our lands are held in common by our shareholders and there is no subdivision or individual lots, although we do recognise individual rights to occupy house-sites and harvest fruit and gardens.

Our shareholders and guest residents have a diversity of interests and occupations. Some are students, some unemployed or on pensions, some employed outside the valley and a few employed within the valley, many of our members are artists and craftspeople.