Johnny Allen died on 22nd December 2025.
He had been bed-bound since he had contracted Covid in Nimbin at the Aquarius50 commemorations in May 2023. Gratitude to his partner Warwick who had dedicated himself to Johnny’s care.
Great sadness and loss wells up at his parting. Also gratitude when we reflect on the huge contribution he made to the making and shaping of the cultural life of our times in Nimbin, Sydney and NSW generally.
I am honoured to say that I walked beside him in the making of the 1973 Nimbin Aquarius Festival.
He had been director of the Aquarius Foundation, the Australian Union of Students’ cultural arm, and I, the director of the Foundation’s biennial Aquarius arts festival. Kaptain Kultur and Superfest, we dubbed ourselves.
And before that we both had been active on the Kensington campus as undergraduates at UNSW. We shared a sociology of festivals and events.
We both understood that shared events create cultural movement. We reckoned that the more artful and engaging the event, the more artful and binding the culture shared, created and birthed.
Synergy was Johnny’s organising modus operandi and credo. Synergy for him meant that extra magic which, when two souls are brought together, is much more than the sum of the parts. So bringing strangers together and making magic was his way.
At the time of our meeting we were resisting Australian engagement in the US War on Vietnam and conscription for it of 19-year old males. We both understood that our task was to create a distinct anti-war youth culture of peace as a counter to the culture of endless wars that we were being sold.
The 1973 Aquarius Festival was synergy manifest. And it was delivered with a lightness of touch of which Johnny was a master. “The path to the Festival must be the Festival,” he proclaimed.
In the organising, the Festival went through many name changes, one of which was The Nimbin Survival Softlick. That was Johnny’s touch.
I recall him in those pre-Aquarius Festival organising days, dancing up Cullen Street from the Aquarius office in the former Nimbin RSL, confronting the folk there with a hug and question: “Are you in love?” Laughter. No offence taken.
But that was only the beginning of Johnny’s synergising career.
During the Sydney Olympics and their preparations, he was to become a respected festival advisor to the NSW Cabinet. He founded of the UTS School of Events Management and so doing, professionalised events management in NSW became a huge influence on people who create events in Sydney and NSW.
He was a big influencer in the founding and growth of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Festival and is venerated for it.
Always organising. Always thorough with the backup and the paperwork. Always polite. Always kind and interested: about him was gentility, dignity and bright intelligence.
Always he carried an affection for Nimbin. He shaped Nimbin culture in so many ways with the Aquarius Festival and he was of course shaped by Nimbin – by Nimbin magic.
Thank you, Johnny. Well may we say, an honourable elder has passed on.
