Farewell to The Rainbow Chai Tent Elder - Chai Mic aka Michael Webb

Vale my Brother from another Mother

Farewell my dear friend …... I will miss your wise counsel.... Your cheeky humour..... I know you are even easier to contact now, free in the spirit realms …..

You have touched so many people in your many travels, the other day, one week after letting your friends know online, I saw that the online posts on Friends of The Chai Tent, have reached 4,523 people ! (more than it usually gets)

Thank you for all the help you have given me over the years, since the day I first began helping you pack up the chai tent. I remember it still ….. 13 year old Sam was saying “Come-on Dad..... Let's go Roller skating “ You, trying to explain how tired you were. You had been fencing all week, and had waited til the last person got off the chai tent carpets and left, before you would begin to pack up! I stayed and helped that day, we talked as we worked. I said Thanks for telling me all that. I needed to hear that.' You said “Don't worry. I needed to hear it just as much as you!” I began to stay behind for pack-up, more and more, as it was a very special time, that I valued in my week.

We teach that which we need to learn ourselves.

In particular, I must thank you for relieving me of my chronic (spirit) pain in my hip. You said, “Have you ever thought, that your hip pain, is because you're not stepping into what you really should be doing?” My hand rose to my forehead as I recognised the truth in that. And from that moment onwards, I survived pain free, until my hip replacement. Except for one day, when I encountered many spirits 'stuck' in an old massacre site, but with your help, I soon realised the cause and released both them and myself, instantly.

Fly free my brother from another mother. I will look for you in the wind. I will see you in the stars. I will call on you when in need. I know you will always be in touch, with the mere thought of your generous smiling face.

Celebrating the Life and Times of our Chai Elder

ChaiMic aka Michael Webb

28-08-1943 – 11-02-2019

Born in England in 1943, Mic made the long journey overland to Australia, in the '60's. I don't know much about what must have been an incredible journey.

He married Mary Johnson, and fathered two boys with her, Jake and Sam Webb. He worked at Reverse Garbage Truck in Melbourne for some years, where they gathered useable offcuts and materials, from factories, for artists and schools to come in and collect whatever inspired them for crafty creations.

In 1980, he met up with Christine Wright at the Hurstbridge Learning Co-op School where their children attended. Chris bought her house 'Tinklebend' at Cottlesbridge, Mic moved from Cottle's Cottage, and they began to combine their two families together.

In 1981, Mic was given some old pots and herbal tea stall equipment, that a traveller Don Lange didn't have room for on his return journey to Broome. Baliba Singh, gave Mic his recipe for Masala Chai (Mixed Spice Tea) while he was staying with Marg Wardell, Marg offered Mic and Chris, her old square canvas, camping tent, to enable dry shelter, after the summer of Mic's first small lean-to canvas stall, when the community at St Andrew's Market, felt it should continue longer. (Mic later learned that his father/or grandfather, once ran a tea stall.)

Mic had been setting his small lean-to stall on the slope at the back of the market, down the hill from the current location, but this space was not large enough for a big 18 foot tent, so he moved up the hill, to the current spot, technically outside the market area, in what once was the 'Police Paddock. Prior to that, it housed many tiny Gold Miners Shacks, Prior to that it was a regular camp spot for the First Peoples of the area.

When I first began attending the market in '83, I stood at the top corner of the market, looking up at this canvas tent, with all these people sitting talking on the carpets. My first thought was, Are they having a private party? …... it wasn't until I spied a friend, Tom, standing behind the counter, that I felt brave enough to step over an invisible boundary out of the market, and walk up those 20 feet to the servery table and buy my first cup of chai. I didn't stay long that first day, but I did return, and gradually met more people and relaxed in the welcoming atmosphere.

There has always been a slight barrier for some people. Mic noticed it, and would spy people hovering, much like I had that first time. He would catch their eye, and invite them up. Still today at The Channon Market, there are many people that look in from outside, not feeling brave enough to explore further than from that invisible boundary. But when they do they find a very welcoming space. Many become part of the Chai Tent Family, and we always welcome volunteers in with open arms, as this is the way it all began.

Chai Mic was the first Centre Pole of the Tent, and invited us in to become ad-hoc members of what has become an ever growing Chai Family.

At many markets, we welcome in, long unseen chai family, who have volunteered many hours serving chai, making food at festivals, or helping us pack up.

The Chai Tent at the weekly market, provided the venue for meeting, for talking, for sharing, an alternate space than The Pub, for music, for friendship, for families to gather. Mic and Chris, began taking the tent to Down To Earth (DTE) Confests, (Conference/Festivals held then in country Victoria and southern NSW), Mic would put up a list at the market asking who would like to go with the Chai Tent Crew? Free food and Chai, in return for random volunteer help and put $10 or $20 into the pot to help purchase Chai Spices and dry foods. Milk and Veggies etc were available on site. It was an awesome group to be a part of. It always became, The Centre of The Festival.

At some of the early DTE Festivals, we'd have strangers begging to have a turn at the wash-up, “Look ! There's no-one doing it now. Can I please do the washing up!” Admittedly the wash-up bowl was a good spot to be on a cold St Andrew's Saturday morning, plunging your hands into hot water, helped unfreeze your cold fingers.

Often the DTE organisers became jealous of the Chai Tent, and blamed us for things like the Drumming, but it was an early DTE tradition that a drum beat, would beat throughout the whole festival, ….. it just began to become more than one drum and it became centred at the chai tent. There weren't as many good drummers back then, and the newest ones were often those who finally got their hands onto a drum in the wee small hours and the sleepless people were kept awake by non-rhythmical drumming. (One year there was a tent peg clanging the metal centre-pole of the second canvas rainbow tent at 3am ! Very randomly and discordant!)

If we think it's hard these days serving chai across the counter over the loud drumming at The Channon Market, and our voices become hoarse as we ask, Soy or Dairy? Or Coconut/Rice Milk? … think back to those days when as we served 24 hours, it was to music and drumming all night and all day.

Those were the days. It is a lot harder these days, to keep the Rainbow Chai Tent going. The set up has grown bigger, more traditions have evolved, that we for some reason? hold on to, and there are less customers at the markets, due to all the Farmers Markets that set up during the week.

Mic started the Chai Tent with a consciousness of poverty. 40 cents a cup. Mic and Chris struggled financially with their blended family and part time work, and yet Mic would give away chai left right and centre. The Chai Tent took over their lives completely, It wasn't just a once a week market stall. It was 24/7, as they lived on the main road, and people dropped in for a cuppa, That cuppa could turn into Stay for dinner, followed by Why not stay the night.

Hours of talking, sharing, counseling friends in need. They lived and breathed Chai Tent, and struggled thru the trials of blending two families into one, in a small house in the bush.

The Rainbow Chai Tent has lost one of our co-founding Elders, the gentle, wise, listener, who touched so many people in his life of service. During his 75 years, in this time, he created such a unique mobile community meeting place, The Chai Joint, which became The Rainbow Chai Tent when they commissioned the first round rainbow tent, from a tent maker in Ringwood, Victoria, spending the proceeds from the 1983/84 Down to Earth Confest.

In 1981, Mic and Chris (Christine Wright, his partner for 5 years), created the Chai Tent, setting up every Saturday at St Andrews Market, Victoria, and took it, along with a volunteer group of chai regulars, to the early Confests held by DTE, where it established a legendary 24 hour Chai servery, with the comfortable space to talk or play music into the wee hours, and see the sun rise.

They brought The Chai Tent up to the Northern Rivers for the Return to Aquarius 10th Anniversary Festival with a bus load of 20 or so Chai Wallahs in 1983, spending a few weeks here, before returning home to St Andrews. The Chai Family began to grow. . Mic would put up a note on the Chai Tent Noticeboard, to see who wanted to go to the festival with The Chai Tent, paying $10 or $20 to kick start the budget for spices and dry goods, (Fruit, veg and milk available on sight) getting Free Chai & Food in return for random help setting up, cooking and serving.

At later festivals new people would offer to cook in the kitchen or beg to have a turn at the Wash-Up, it was the Centre of the festival, The Place to Be. It began to grow more, with plans to start growing some of the spices used, at Chris's place 'Tinklebend', at Cottlesbridge, which saw Rainbow Chai 24/7, as it was on the main road and everyone and anyone, stopped in for a cup of chai. A Cup of Chai, a Long Chat, A Cry for Help, Stay for Dinner, Why not stay the night? The two of them lived 'Chai Tent' in a constant whirl of people, on top of learning how to co-parent their 'blended family', Jake and Sam, Josie and Damon, all 18 Months apart. They were amazing years with some truly beautiful, and memorable experiences, catering for music in local halls etc. We all had some big dreams and plans …..

,,,,,, and then in '86, The Peace Train travelled down to Melbourne on it's journey around Australia …...

a second Rainbow tent was hurriedly commissioned ….. and what seemed like half of the most active Chai Wallahs took off with Mic, to join the travelling 'caravanserai' !

Michael Jack joined the Peace Train too, with his newly bought old Tramways Bus, fitting the start of a second story/platform before they left and a rudimentary fit out inside, becoming The Chai Bus. Chris and I drew up a step by step instruction list to assist those left behind, rostered on to run the weekly chai stall with the first tent, as there was quite a process to learn. Over the many months the mob were away travelling, it became just one or two people who would or could step up to the plate, for any length of time. Chris needed a break from the exhausting 5 years of 24/7 Chai, The Montrose Farm Chai Crew had other stuff to do,

I ran it on my own quite a bit,

Rodd Pitt a local potter did a spell,

Bob Brewster did a spell, ( Vale Bob. He passed on his final journey 2 days after Mic on the 13th Feb and I just learnt, made the overland journey from Australia to Europe, the reverse of Mic's journey. I wonder how close they came to passing one another along the way ?) ….

a Dutch clown Wouter Swart, leaving the Peace Train, hopped off a boat in Darwin and returned to stay with me at Living Rainbows Workshop in Nth Melbourne to help me with the tent, instead of sailing home to The Netherlands.

(It was he that later took the old tent on another journey and it was set up at The Aboriginal Tent Embassy at Mrs Macquarie's Chair in Sydney, supporting the Anti-Bicentennial Protests, of which I only recently found out about while watching the film '88', about the bus loads of First Nations People converging on Sydney in 1988; having met many FN people out in Central Australia).

It was while Mic journeyed with the peace train, and later with just the chai crew and the band 'Dreamtime' and crew, that Mic began to really question who he was, and what he was doing. Over the phone, he told me he sometimes didn't feel brave enough to get up and make an announcement to a large group, and being the 'centre pole' of this Rainbow Chai Tent he had become confused about who he was, for a time. So he left the travelling crew, somewhere along the way, and Christine & he went their separate ways, & Mic journeyed alone for a time.

He spent many years living with the Ananda Margas, and even made and served Chai with them at St Andrews and Woodford Festival. It was there he met and married Kate, and later they moved to Warnambool, when Kate;s mother was sick. Mick studied Ceramics at the Warnambool TAFE.

It may have been there in Warnambool, that Mic learnt about Chiron Healing, which he studied and later taught. https://www.iachi.com/the-technique/founder-of-chiron-healing/

He has been running Chiron Healing Workshops around the world, in particular in Taiwan, teaching other's to be qualified Chiron

Healers, and is where he met Joy Yeh, who has been his partner for the past years. Joy is now a fully trained Chiron Healer too

.

Many people in the Northern Rivers know Mic for his Bush Flower Essences, and he ran a Essence Healing/Counselling Umbrella Stall at The Channon for a couple of years, & recently on the street in Nimbin when he was back in Australia from Taipei. Michael was a flower essence practitioner with 30 years experience. He began in 1980 with the Bach Flower Remedies, followed in 1995 with the Australian Bush Flower essences.

He channelled his own Bush /Flower Essences and published a book on them, Rainforest Range Essences 2011. See http://www.micessence or http://www.ancientwisdoms.org.uk/id3.html

Approximately 15 years ago he created his first Rainforest Range Essence from a Lacebark tree from the braciciton family, and over the next three years made another 13 essences from trees growing around The Channon in northern New South Wales Australia. These Essences differ from the Flower Remedies in their delivery technique. Like the Ancient Civilisation Essences® he had used in his work as a Chiron Healing® practitioner, his Rainforest Range Essences are applied by placing one drop in the Feeling Centre instead of a number of drops taken orally. Another difference is that the they are used singularly, not as a mixture. The above mentioned Lacebark tree is the Essence of Knowing used especially in cases of despair.

He describes how he uses them: "I am now only using the Rainforest Range Essences. Over the past few years when prescribing essences I would, as soon as I had been given the person's name, immediately be given from my spirit guides the appropriate essence or essences for that person. In this way I am able to prescribe for people around the world although, if they are not there in person I do need their birthdate."

The book that Michael has written is particularly useful for practitioners wishing to use these essences. A beautiful book with colour photos, information and intuitive writings.

Michael Webb says about the Ancient Civilisation of Lyonesse, which existed off the end of Cornwall, until submerged by a huge tidal wave:

"I have a great deal of interest with the civilization of Lyonesse. There are 36 Ancient Civilisation Essences® used in Chiron Healing®, Lyonesse is one of them.

Soon after I became a teacher in 1998 I was chosen by Chiron to be the guardian of the Lyonesse essence. Over the past three years I have visited the Isles of Scilly researching the ancient Lyonesse connection looking especially for the site of the ancient well, always the centre of a civilization. I am continuing this research this year.”

“Since I visited England in September 2008 I have been drawn to ancient wells, stone circles, standing stones, quoits etc. I have found that I have been able to connect with the spirit guardians of those places and have been able to gather a great deal of information from those beings. Much of the information is about the particular attributes that a well especially, may have. Many of the wells no longer have any water, much to the dismay of their guardians, many are also in poor repair. It is important that these places are respected for their sacredness. The springs and wells are the greatest gift that Gaia offers us - that is water, the essence of life! Without water people cannot exist. This is why villages, hamlets and towns grew up at certain places because of the water supply; without it they would not have existed. Each well had its particular attributes because of the rock strata that it had moved through before it flowed to the surface; this was Gaia's blessing. People from outside that particular area would come to live there because of those known attributes. The well would also store the feeling reason of events that happened. In the early days there was usually a physical guardian who would dispense the waters and pass on information that was asked of them" - - -MicEssence

Vale Michael Webb, I feel so blessed to have known you and to have received such wise counsel from you so often, you touched so many people in so many ways. Reading all the comments people have written online, gave me the idea to make an 'event' page online as a place to gather people's memories of him, to assist in the compilation of stories that may one day chronicle the Story of The Rainbow Chai Tent.

If you have photos or stories, please feel free to share them here https://tinyurl.com/ChaiMic

Words from Chris …..

“Mic got the recipe from Bali He had been selling chai from a fire on the ground at St. Andrews for a few weeks. He was given an old tent by Marg Wardell and then set up at the site the chai tent still occupies- though a mere shadow of its former self- at St. Andrews market Mic and I spent the next 5 years living and breathing chai community. About 20 of us went up to the Return to Aquarius festival in a big bus -great adventure We bought the first rainbow tent with proceeds from the first Wangaratta down to earth festival in 1983/84 (over New Year) We went to many festivals and local celebrations with the Saturday market and our home at Tinklebend, Cottlesbridge, a constant gathering place, an all week drop in point for many.

The Chai Tent went off on the peace train travels in about 1986 and eventually the spiritual home of the chai tent became the Channon market run by Michael Jack, Meggan and others.

Mic came and went as he strode through our lives, the archetypal Fool, charismatic leader spiritual adventurer and inspirational healer for so many. He is sadly missed” - Christine Wright

Words from Benny ….

"A great luminary in many ways our Mic Webb. I would come down from Nimbin to share news from the pioneering moments soon after the Aquarius festival. Michael Webb created the first Chai Tent which he brought over for the 10th anniversary of Aquarius on the Tuntable Falls co-ordination Co-op commons. This was the beginning of his move to the Northern Rivers Rainbow Region. Mic was a community leader. He created this alternative, community, cultural meeting place at the market. At Down to Earth confests the Rainbow Chai Tent became a major meeting space through Michael's selfless dedication and leadership. The Chai tent story is a big one, which I had discussed with Megan Jack just yesterday [at The Channon Market 10th Feb], before hearing this tragic news today." - Benny Zable