From nature, nudity and mind-altering substances to tuckshop duty, ambulance access concerns, and an in-depth understanding of company law.
Such has been the transformation for one of Australia's most enduring alternative-living communities, Starlight, and its residents.
Set in the hills behind Yandina, on Queensland's Sunshine Coast, the Starlight Community consists of 23 sharehold plots on 130 hectares of heavily forested land.
About 35 people live in the off-grid community, relying on solar power and rainwater.
Land clearing is restricted and cats and dogs are banned to protect wildlife.
Residents who buy a plot become shareholders in Starlight Community Pty Ltd, which owns the land, and they must receive approval from two thirds of the existing shareholders.
When Starlight was established in the early 1970s, media described the occupants as "long-haired hippies" and "draft dodgers", however Starlighters now largely assimilate with the local community and say they are not secretive nor separatist.
"I think a big part of that is because broader society is much more like us than in the 1970s," says Starlight resident Bruce "Spy" Stewart, who admits swimming naked in nearby Browns Creek on hallucinogens in bygone decades.
"I think a lot of people came around to our way of thinking when it comes to renewable energy, conservation, creativity, and consideration for one another.
"We don't stand out so much, because we aren't so visibly at conflict with the world around us."
Colourful beginnings
Mr Stewart says he had a very different experience when he first arrived in Yandina in the 1970s, and was ordered to return to the end of the queue at a hardware store because of the length of his hair.
Bestowed the nickname "Spy" due to a perceived likeness with the black spy from Mad magazine, Mr Stewart first visited Starlight in 1972.
He then bought into the community in 1976, paying $5,000 for 11 hectares.
During his time at Starlight, Mr Stewart has made a living as a musician, a candle and sandal manufacturer, a goat farmer and, more lately, by delivering LPG gas.
He is first officer of the Starlight Rural Fire Brigade, sits on the community steering committee, and in 50-odd years has faced the harsh realities of losing cohabitants to degenerative conditions and illness.
"The dirt roads and the intermittent internet coverage can trip up emergency services," Mr Stewart says.
"A few years ago we had a gent suffer a heart attack at the top of the hills and the ambulance took the wrong road. Sadly, he couldn't be saved by the time they arrived.
"These are things we have to consider now, I guess."
An alternative life
Starlight historian Annie Smallmon occupies a quaint dwelling in the community, not far from the community hall.
"Starlight was started by Tom Vichta who bought 57 hectares off a farmer in 1971, and it more than doubled in size by 1975," Ms Smallmon says.
"The idea was to attract musicians, artists and writers into the area.
"Disillusioned people from Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane arrived, all wanting an alternative life, living off the land without the constraints of bureaucracy and laws."
The community's most famous former inhabitant, award-winning author Peter Carey, set his 1981 novel Bliss at Starlight.
Like Carey, Ms Smallmon was first introduced to the area through a former romantic flame.
Ms Smallmon, who lives with Parkinson's disease, relocated to Starlight in 2009 partly because the environment diminished her symptoms and she felt calmer.
However, she says life in Starlight "hasn't been all peace, love and good vibes".
"The police didn't take too kindly to the long-haired, dope-smoking hippies back in the era of [former premier] Joh Bjelke-Petersen and there was harassment and threats about removing children," Ms Smallmon says.
"Many residents found they couldn't sustain the lifestyle, quit, and went back to the city.
"There have also been stages where personalities started to clash and made life unpleasant."
Co-ops and cliques
While Carey has returned to Starlight to visit, writing in The Age that "even for those of us who don't always live there, it's home", conflict in alternative communities does occur.
Past resident Mark Anning lived in both Starlight and the Goolawah Land Sharing Cooperative near Port Macquarie.
"Starlighters are by and large the successful ones when it comes to intentional communities," Mr Anning says.
"Co-ops aren't for everyone and cliques form. I'd say they work for people who can play well with others.
"The shared vision that forms the bond between residents is vital and must be rock solid to transcend personal differences."
An ability to adapt
Ms Smallmon says constantly interacting with fellow occupants and government organisations necessitates becoming well-versed in company law, property law and governance issues.
Some choose to live quietly, while others volunteer locally at the school tuckshop, man the popular Yandina Markets, and run businesses in town.
Some children in the community are home-schooled; others are in mainstream education.
Historian William Metcalf writes that many of Australia's "Utopian communities", established from the mid-19th century, failed due to the choice of land and its serviceability and the standard of housing and health care.
Louise Crabtree-Hayes of Western Sydney University, who has expertise in community-led housing in Australia, said Starlight belonged to an era when numerous "Age of Aquarius" communities emerged.
"Co-operatives do better when everyone is committed to principles and something bigger than themselves," she says.
"Conflict resolution, care and being flexible with people as their circ*mstances change — whether that's having kids, losing a partner, falling ill — is at the core.
"Right now we are seeing interest in communal living not only due to property costs, but people wanting more compact arrangements, which have lower impact on the environment."
Professor Crabtree-Hayes says people aren't always attracted to living around people similar to themselves.
"Indeed, a desire for communal living can stem from wanting to be around people who are younger or older, people of different cultures who might broaden horizons, or people of different perspectives who challenge or excite."
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