Idealism, Hippies and Life in a Commune with Olive Jones

Olive Jones was a teenager in 1979 when she joined a group of idealists and subsistence farmers to purchase a farm in the Motueka Valley and establish an alternative rural commune. They rejected mainstream culture, in favour of social, sexual and physical liberation from the ‘uptight’ world they grew up in. She talks about the madness, the humour and hard work of living an alternative lifestyle with Karyn Hay.

Olive Jones is one of the founding members of the Graham Downs community, an arable farm purchased near Motueka in the late 1970s. From her teens to her early 30s, Olive lived off this land, cultivating self-sufficiency as a way of life, learning to grow and process food, build a house, and farm animals. Her resulting life-long interest in intentional communities has led Olive to study community cultures around the world and resulted in a PhD that documents long-lived intentional communities in New Zealand. Olive continues to be associated with the Graham Downs community, through her role as a trustee of the Renaissance Community Trust that owns Graham Downs.

Karyn Hay found fame as the presenter of 1980s music TV show Radio with Pictures where she was reputedly the first television presenter to speak with a New Zealand accent. She continued advocating for the music industry while building her career as a writer. She has written three novels and published four short story collections. She won the Best First Book Award in the Montana New Zealand Book Awards in 2001 and was awarded a Frank Sargeson Fellowship in 2004. Karyn was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to broadcasting and the music industry in the 2019 New Years Honours List.