Australian Psychedelic History Project

Aquarius Festival, Nimbin, 1973. Photograph by Peter Derrett OAM, used with permission.

Australian Psychedelic History Project

The Australian Psychedelic History Project (APHP) is dedicated to discovering, recording and preserving the stories of people whose lives contributed to, helped shape, or were touched by Australia's psychedelic and ethnobotanical history. 

Much of this history was never formally documented. It survives in personal memories, forgotten archives, photographs, letters, artworks, medical files and the stories of people who were there. As time passes, many of these first-hand accounts are at risk of being lost.

Our aim is to build a richer and more human record of Australian psychedelic history by bringing together institutional and medical records, counterculture histories and, most importantly, the voices of people who actually lived through these times.

What Inspired the Project

The inspiration for this project came from the remarkable first-hand testimony of Evelyn Harrison, who was part of Australia’s first wave of psychedelic therapy and research.

Evelyn generously shared her memories of receiving psilocybin-assisted therapy at Melbourne’s Newhaven Private Hospital and beyond in the 1960s. Her personal account brought a largely forgotten chapter of Australian history to life in a way that medical records and archival documents alone could not.

Her courage in sharing her story also highlighted something important: many of the people who lived through this history are getting older, and their memories may disappear if we do not take the time to record them.

Evelyn’s testimony became a cornerstone of our research into Melbourne’s Forgotten Psychedelic Era and helped inspire this project to find, record and preserve more of these voices while we still can.

We’re Interested in Preserving History, While Giving You a Choice About Identification

The aim of this project is to preserve stories that help us better understand Australia’s early psychedelic history. We are interested in the experiences, events and history, and contributors can choose how they would like to be identified.

Some people may be comfortable being recognised as part of this history, particularly where their experience took place in a medical, research or other lawful setting. Others may prefer to protect their identity, particularly when discussing psychedelic use that was illegal at the time or other sensitive experiences.

When sharing your story, consider what level of identification you are comfortable with. You can choose to use your first name and surname initial, a pseudonym, or remain anonymous. We do not collect full names through the story submission form, helping to reduce unnecessary identifying information associated with potentially sensitive historical accounts.

There is no need to identify yourself or other people for your story to be historically valuable. The context of your experience is what matters, and we would like to understand as much of it as possible while helping you balance useful historical detail with privacy and personal circumstances.

Our Current Focus: Up to the End of 1979

The current phase of the project is seeking experiences, memories and historical material relating to Australian psychedelic history up to and including 31 December 1979.

This period spans the formative decades of Australia’s early psychedelic history, from institutional research and therapy in the late 1950s through the counterculture and social changes of the 1960s and 1970s.

Psychedelics moved through many parts of Australian society, across cultural and ethnic groups, the establishment and the underground, from hospitals and consulting rooms to artists, botanists, gardeners, mycologists, musicians, festivals, alternative communities and everyday people.

We are interested in all sides of this history, and everything in between: therapy and research, LSD and psilocybin, psychedelic mushrooms and ethnobotanical plants, art and music, alternative communities, spiritual exploration, underground networks, activism and personal experience.

We also want to understand what happened afterwards. An experience may have occurred before the end of 1979, but its influence on someone’s creativity, spirituality, relationships, activism, work or way of seeing the world may have lasted a lifetime. That continuing story is part of the history too.

While our current collection period ends on 31 December 1979, we are still interested in significant stories from later decades that have helped shape Australian psychedelic history. If you have a story from 1980 onwards that you feel is important, contact us at history@entheogenesis.org.

Want to know more about the kinds of stories and historical details we are looking for? Visit How to Record Your Story for some of the questions we hope to better understand and prompts to help you get started.

First Nations Histories

We welcome appropriate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander stories, perspectives and historical material that intersect with the history we are researching, including experiences and encounters up to the end of 1979.

We recognise that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples hold diverse and distinct histories, cultural knowledge and relationships with Country, plants, medicines, healing, ceremony and spirituality that long predate the period covered by this project. These relationships should be understood within their own cultural contexts and should not automatically be interpreted through modern Western concepts such as ‘psychedelics’ or ‘altered states of consciousness’.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples comprise many distinct Nations, peoples and communities, each with their own histories, cultural authority, knowledge systems and relationships with Country. Knowledge, practices and authority belong to particular peoples, Countries, families and communities, so we will not assume that information about one Nation applies to another.

Historical sources also require care. Where material comes from non-Indigenous researchers, doctors, anthropologists, botanists, settlers or other observers, we will distinguish their interpretations from First Nations accounts and perspectives. Wherever possible, we will preserve information about the source, Nation, Country, speaker and circumstances in which knowledge was recorded.

We recognise that some knowledge is culturally restricted, collectively held, or not appropriate for a public or research archive. The ability of an individual to tell their own story does not necessarily give them authority to disclose cultural knowledge belonging more broadly to their family, community or Nation.

Our intention is to help preserve history without claiming ownership of First Nations cultural knowledge, and to respect cultural authority, community wishes and the right of First Nations peoples to determine how their knowledge is represented, preserved, accessed and shared.

Where First Nations cultural knowledge, stories or material are contributed, the project will respect Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property (ICIP) principles, including appropriate consent, attribution, cultural authority and any restrictions on access, reproduction or publication.

Where relevant, the project will also be guided by the AIATSIS Code of Ethics for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Research, including its principles of Indigenous self-determination, Indigenous leadership, impact and value, and sustainability and accountability.

Whose Stories Are We Looking For?

Above all, we want to hear first-hand accounts from people who were there.

Your story does not need to involve a famous person or major historical event. A seemingly small memory, a person, place, conversation, experience or forgotten detail, may provide an important piece of a much larger historical picture.

Your memories don’t need to be perfect either. You may not remember an exact date or someone’s full name. Tell us what you remember and, where you are uncertain, simply tell us that too.

We also recognise that important histories survive through families, communities and personal archives. If your story concerns a parent, grandparent, relative or someone you knew, and you have direct knowledge of how psychedelics affected their life or those around them, we would also like to hear from you.

You may also hold part of this history without having a story to record yourself. Photographs, letters, diaries, artworks, medical records, flyers, publications and other surviving documents can all help preserve the historical record.

Aquarius Festival, Nimbin, 1973. Photograph by Harry Watson Smith. Creative Commons.