The double rainbow

"In 1969, New Zealand's best-known poet, James K. Baxter, moved to Jerusalem on the Whanganui River to establish a community under the mana of the local hapū, Ngāti Hau. The Jerusalem commune proved a magnet for disaffected and damaged young people. As the setting for Baxter's celebrated late works, Jerusalem Sonnets, Jerusalem Daybook and Autumn Testament, it quickly became the country's most famous hippie community, as well as a media byword for the idealism and excess of the emerging youth culture. But what was life really like at Jerusalem, beyond the popular stereotypes? And what did it…