[1] Nambassa is also the tribal name of a charitable trust that has championed sustainable ideas and demonstrated practical counterculture ideals, a spiritually based alternative lifestyle, environmentalism and green issues from the early 1970s to the present.

Great powers of this food are drawn when all hearts come together in joy, relaxed happiness and nature- like conditions, enhanced by singing, music and above all love.

Let us take a look at city life, the frantic rush and bustle on the streets, all that traffic and factories with all their pollution, noise and waste, and cynical exploitation by big business.

Many of those involved in Nambassa aspired to the notion that throughout the evolution of western civilisation, many valuable ancient survival, healing and spiritual techniques, had been lost over 1700 years of a philosophically and culturally dominating Roman Christianity.

[15] Nambassa advocates that many past civilisations supporting religious and political institutions, have historically sought to alienate, and too often violently eliminate, many worthwhile belief systems which did not conform to its then strict conservative doctrines on culture and religion.

Through its wide variety of workshop subjects, the festivals attempted to nurture a better understanding of culture and spirituality with the goal of fostering a more tolerant and better informed society.

It was during the social revolution of the early 1960s and 1970s[18] that Nambassa pioneered the concept, and was a world leader, in what was to evolve as a new format of presentation for the all encompassing major cultural, creative arts and music festivals.

[19] While the 1960s and 1970s hippy movements were, and continue to be, unfairly derided [20] for their infatuation with rediscovering ancient religion and culture, many of these re-birthing systems are now part of mainstream ideology.

[21] At Nambassa, one could attend and participate in free workshop demonstrations, symposium and discussion groups on diverse subjects such as: leather-work, hand crafted jewellery, spinning (textiles), pottery, indigenous Australians didgeridoo, boomerang throwing, creative art, musical instruments, puppeteering, bonsai trees, batiking, screen printing, basket weaving, Māori woodcarving, furniture and woodturning, natural cosmetics, custom made Sandal (footwear), clay therapy, aboriginal emu egg carving, silk screening, crochet and embroidery, macramé, ceramics, bone carving, candle making, stained glass, paper making, journalism and printing, glass blowing, enamelling, Māori art and jewellery, wood carving, the art of throwing pottery, weaving on inkle and back strap looms, wood-adzing, moccasin making, airbrushing, organic gardening, tie-dye, Māori kit making, mulching and composting, growing and using soya beans, herb gardening, hydroponics, small orcharding, natural child birth, breast feeding, child care, alternative education, animal husbandry, raku pottery, fencing, small dams and irrigation, solar heating, methane gas plants, wind pumps and generators, solar power, solar cooker, waterwheels, goat farming, sheep milking, rammed earth walls, soil-cement adobe, stone-masonry, hydraulic power, wind power, low cost housing and renovation, furniture making, moulds and mud houses, bamboo and its uses, alternative lifestyles and communities, Rudolf Steiner Schools, permaculture, ecology and mining, native forests, saving the whales, food preparation and storage, dried fruit, bread making, self-sufficiency, wine making, beekeeping, butter and cheese making, soap making, food cooperatives, healthy eating, civil liberties, New Zealand's nuclear-free zone, world peace and disarmament, music, Gay Rights, puppetry, origami, theatre, dance and costumes, mask making, conservation and pesticides, clean water, mobile homes construction, bush craft, legal aspects of alternative land development, horse ploughing, family planning, vegetarianism, animal rights, martial arts, Third World poverty, civil and human rights, work cooperatives, craft cooperatives, wood gas producers, solar panels, development of electric cars and bikes, Feminism, Women's Rights, amateur radio, wood stoves and wetbacks, kite making, the environment (Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth), alternative education, Pacific cultural exchange (Pacific Islander), Māori land rights, community development, Māori marae, Māori hāngī, Maori Language Tutorial, substance abuse, new age and green politics, alternative media, meditation, yoga, sufi dancing, I Ching, tarot cards, alchemy, massage, sweat lodge, nutrition, alternative medicine, astrology, prayer and chanting, clairvoyance, meditation, spiritual healing, naturopathy, acupuncture, tai chi, herbalism, natural remedies, reflexology, iridology and osteopathy.

These centers of community are where one found the main information centre or where folks simply culminated just to absorb the diverse quirky celebratory ambiance.

Nambassa vigorously promoted handcrafts, not only because of their therapeutic qualities, but because they had the potential to be a source of revenue to lifestyle proponents looking towards self-sufficiency and economic independence.

From the festival village one could attend any number of craft workshops, pick up a copy of the daily Nambassa Waves newspaper, go buy fresh bread cooked in the wood-fired oven bakery constructed in a converted hay shed, go do some shopping, check out Radio Nambassaland, pick up some information from the mother centre, or just simply chill out and absorb the atmosphere.

By February 1977 Lorraine Ward and Bernard Woods in an old restored farmhouse atop of rural Bulltown Rd in Waihi, assisted Terry to edit a blueprint for the Nambassa Trust and the first festival.

The first Mother Centre was opened on a farm in Willow Road at Waihi early November 1977, where the initial Nambassa support base and volunteers assembled to construct the festival facilities to accommodate a small city for the planned three-day music, crafts and alternative lifestyle event which was to be held at the end of January 1978 on two farms at the end of Landlyst Waihi.

Three months out of each festival its supporters would assemble at a farm community called the "Mother Centre", living in house trucks, vans, cars and tents.

Nambassa's open door policy encouraged anyone of whatever race, creed or economic circumstance to join in, providing one met the basic rules of the Mother Centre camp.

Nambassa is administered not by private enterprise but through a registered charitable trust whose articles list provisions and aims allowing it to organise public events to raise funds to meet objectives.

This effectively enabled the events organisers to set minimal entry fees, based upon projected profits, so that festivals were affordable to lower income people.

Out of the first 1978 three-day festival, the requirement of a second stage grew from the need to expand the entertainment program because of the resounding feedback from local performers and artists wanting to play at Nambassa.

The Nambassa Winter Show with Mahana was a musical theatrical production of 60 entertainers and crew who toured the North Island of New Zealand in a convoy of Mobile homes, buses and vans, performing at major centres and theatres throughout September and October 1978.

Housetruckers are individuals, families and groups who convert old trucks and school buses into mobile-homes and live in them, preferring an unattached and transient gypsy lifestyle to more conventional housing.

This vinyl release featured Split Enz, Living Force, Flight 77, Chapman and White, Mahana, John Hore, Steve Tulloch, Plague, Chris Thompson, Schtung, Rick Steel, Tribrations, Nevil Purvis, Satchidananda, Gary McCormick, Andy Anderson.