Graeme imagines an introduction being written to the The Chronicles of Peacebus.comin a 100 years time reading something like this:

"At the beginning of the 21 century, all the so-called worker's states had been vanquished by so called market forces. The ambitions of the rapacious rich and their corporate management elites seemed without obstruction and without frontier.

"A new tyranny of the super rich took hold and the gains in social conditions won by the social reformers of the 18th and 19th centuries were being systematically undone. Representative democracy, once the great hope of liberty, had become the best government money could buy.

"Like all previous tyrannies of the rich, the magnitude of the greed of 21st century tyranny was matched only by its ruthlessness and its armed might. What was new about this tyranny was that the new technology of communication, trade and war had made the reach of its piracy, propoganda and oppression both global and at the same time intimately domestic.

"Every home had a TV set and the medium was the massage. The reach and thrall of the US corporate propoganda and war machine seemed absolute.

"But liberty lives in the heart; freedom is a yearning ever reborn and oppression is liberty's midwife. The US propoganda illusion seemed absolute but it was only an illusion, a bad stretch of the imagination and ever ill fitting on a world of change and chaos.

"As with previous liberation movements, change did not come from the centre. It could only come from the margins, from the chaos, the cracks and the contradictions in the old regime, first heard in small voices and from those furthest from power and influence, but close to the poor, the dispossessed and the suffering.

"It was an old road and yet a new one in another age and there were no maps. The times demanded new pathways, new skills and new tactics and another generation pioneers. No one knew the best way to proceed. There was just the example of the ancestors, the needs of the times, the courage of the early waking grievers, the will to begin and the creativity of the moment.

"In that time, Peacebus.com was one such marginal voice ..."

Peacebus.com's orginal vehicle was a Toyota Coaster called Peacebus which was a gift to Rainbow Region social activism by Tony Spanos, defacto street major of South Sydney and the proprietor of the legendary, Grafitti Hall of Fame. 'French' Sam Bernard of the Nimbin HEMP Embassy's famous Hemp Bar was its first benefactor.

Artists Elspeth Jones and Helen Rodriguez painted the murals on the Toyota - on one side the Nimbin rocks, and on the other, Timbarra sacred mountain.

For each mission new livery and banners were prepared. Here are some samples.

On 2 September 2002 the Toyota Coaster was wrecked on the Pacific Highway on its way to the NSW Parliament in Sydney to bear witness for endangered species. The Coaster was written off but retrieved from the wreckers yard, patched up and then seized by a Nimbin business man who claimed a higher ownership and a better use for it.

Now too battered and ridden with mechanical problems to ever be re-registered, the old girl rusts behind Nimbin's Oasis Cafe, a shadow of its former glory.

For two years, 2001 through 2002, Graeme's travelling companions included two sheep, Molly and Jolly, which travelled in a trailer and were minded by Jennifer the Maremma. The sheep are no more.

But Peacebus.com lives on as matter made spirit.

Click here for photos of Peacebus.com in action.

Click here to read the stories of some of its past campaigns and productions.

The campaigns of Peacebus.com are supported by the kindness of its friends. Cash donations are most welcome.

Please make cheques out to Peacebus.com and send them addressed to Graeme Dnstan c/- Summerland Credit Union, Cullen Street, Nimbin 2480 Australia. To direct deposit use these numbers:
Branch Number = 802222
Account Number = 40883 S1.1

If you want to be kept informed about the further adventures of Peacebus.com, send us an email and your name will be added to the email list for all our media releases, notices of actions and reports of those actions.