Alternatives Bookshop

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From mushroom foraging to quantum physics, indigenous wisdom to prize-winning fiction, we handpick select titles on natural history, earth spiritualism, the mind, the world, and beyond.

Last month the Bellingen Story Circle brought us the Norse myth of the Death of Balder the Beautiful.Balder is the most ...
25/07/2026

Last month the Bellingen Story Circle brought us the Norse myth of the Death of Balder the Beautiful.

Balder is the most beloved of the gods, and he begins to dream of his own death. His mother F***g rides out and takes an oath from every thing in the world that it will not harm him: from fire and water, iron and stone, sickness and beast. But alas, a mother cannot protect her child from everything in the world. One small thing is overlooked, and through a jealous god’s cunning, guided by a blind and unknowing hand, what was foreseen comes to pass.

Storyteller Nathan Meola was in full command of the tale, a room entranced. Joseph Fairburn played a hauntingly tuned twelve string guitar in accompaniment, and a ritual drum that carried the story into the body.

The myth knows something about grief. That we cannot armour what we love. That the small overlooked thing is the one that undoes us, and that great harm is often done by a blind hand that never meant it. Light dies, and it is not brought back by wishing, nor by all the grief in the world.

Yet Balder is not gone forever. He waits below, and rises only on the far side of the world’s ending. Some things cannot be recovered. They can only be born a second time.

—

The next Bellingen Story Circle is on Thursday 30 July. We’ll go down into the Sumerian underworld with the Descent of Inanna, one of the oldest written stories known to us. A dark tale. Adults only.

We have been hitting capacity. Book ahead to secure your spot. Tickets via the link in our bio.

Joseph S. Fairburn

Last month the Bellingen Story Circle brought us the Norse myth of the Death of Balder the Beautiful.Balder is the most ...
25/07/2026

Last month the Bellingen Story Circle brought us the Norse myth of the Death of Balder the Beautiful.

Balder is the most beloved of the gods, and he begins to dream of his own death. His mother F***g rides out and takes an oath from every thing in the world that it will not harm him: from fire and water, iron and stone, sickness and beast. But alas, a mother cannot protect her child from everything in the world. One small thing is overlooked, and through a jealous god’s cunning, guided by a blind and unknowing hand, what was foreseen comes to pass.

Storyteller Nathan Meola was in full command of the tale, a room entranced. Joseph Fairburn played a hauntingly tuned twelve string guitar in accompaniment, and a ritual drum that pounded the story into the body.

The myth knows something about grief. That we cannot armour what we love. That the small overlooked thing is the one that undoes us, and that great harm is often done by a blind hand that never meant it. Light dies, and it is not brought back by wishing, nor by all the grief in the world.

Yet Balder is not gone forever. He waits below, and rises only on the far side of the world’s ending. Some things cannot be recovered. They can only be born a second time.

—

The next Bellingen Story Circle is on Thursday 30 July. Nathan descends into the Sumerian underworld with the Descent of Inanna, one of the oldest written stories known to us. A dark tale. Adults only.

We have been hitting capacity. Book ahead to secure your spot. Tickets via the link in our bio.

Joseph S. Fairburn

03/07/2026

A throwback to one of our favourite nights: Baran Yildiz and Greg Sheehan, together at our first Tiny Bookshop Concert last year.

Two masters of their craft. A collaboration long talked about. On this night, in our shop, it finally happened.

Baran is one of Australia’s finest handpan players, carrying the melodies and rhythms of Anatolia and the Middle East into something modern and his own. Greg is a percussion legend, fifty years deep, and a Bellingen local.

This piece is an improvisation built on Greg’s diamond rhythm method, shifting subdivisions to create syncopation. It’s from this complex yet stable base that their improvisation can flourish. The room was enraptured, and the sounds still linger. I find myself reflecting on this one often.

We’ll keep hosting Tiny Bookshop Concerts, bringing rare talent and interesting sounds to our magical little town of Bellingen. This is a little snippet from our first.

🛸 Baran Yildiz
🪘 Greg Sheehan
📷 Ryan Jasper

Last month the Bellingen Story Circle brought us the ancient Greek tale of Psyche and Eros.Psyche is a mortal woman so b...
17/06/2026

Last month the Bellingen Story Circle brought us the ancient Greek tale of Psyche and Eros.

Psyche is a mortal woman so beautiful that people begin to worship her in place of the goddess Aphrodite herself. Slighted, the goddess sends her son Eros to curse the girl with love for some lowly creature. Instead, Eros falls for her. Carried to a hidden palace, Psyche is visited each night by a lover she is forbidden to see, a presence in the dark she trusts without ever knowing his face. When doubt overcomes her, she lights a lamp to look upon him, a drop of hot oil wakes him, and he is gone. What follows is a series of impossible tasks, and at last a descent into the underworld itself.

Storyteller Nathan Meola was at his finest, drawing the whole room into Psyche’s descent. Accompanied by CJ Melchizedek on a lute-like instrument whose haunting sound carried the echo of times past.

There’s a reason this myth has been retold for as long as we’ve known love. Many have mined it for its wisdom, yet never exhausted it.

At its heart is a movement from love in the dark to love in the light. At first Psyche loves a husband she cannot see, a union blissful but blind. When she lifts the lamp to look upon him, the spell breaks and he is gone. Yet that act of seeing, for all it costs her, is the beginning of something truer. The tasks and the descent that follow are the labour of becoming a self who can love with eyes wide open.

💘

The next Bellingen Story Circle is on Thursday 25 June. Nathan turns to Norse myth and the death of Balder the Beautiful.

Nathan Meola
Chris-James Melchizedek

Last month the Bellingen Story Circle brought us the ancient Greek tale of Psyche and Eros.Psyche is a mortal woman so b...
16/06/2026

Last month the Bellingen Story Circle brought us the ancient Greek tale of Psyche and Eros.

Psyche is a mortal woman so beautiful that people begin to worship her in place of the goddess Aphrodite herself. Slighted, the goddess sends her son Eros to curse the girl with love for some lowly creature. Instead, Eros falls for her. Carried to a hidden palace, Psyche is visited each night by a lover she is forbidden to see, a presence in the dark she trusts without ever knowing his face. When doubt overcomes her, she lights a lamp to look upon him, a drop of hot oil wakes him, and he is gone. What follows is a series of impossible tasks, and at last a descent into the underworld itself.

Storyteller Nathan Meola was at his finest, drawing the whole room into Psyche’s descent. He was accompanied by CJ Melchizedek on a lute-like instrument whose haunting sound carried the echo of times past.

There’s a reason this myth has been retold for as long as we’ve known love. Many have mined it for its wisdom, yet never exhausted it.

At its heart is a movement from love in the dark to love in the light. At first Psyche loves a husband she cannot see, a union blissful but blind. When she lifts the lamp to look upon him, the spell breaks and he is gone. Yet that act of seeing, for all it costs her, is the beginning of something truer. The tasks and the descent that follow are the labour of becoming a self who can love with eyes wide open.

💘

The next Bellingen Story Circle is on Thursday 25 June. Nathan turns to Norse myth and the death of Balder the Beautiful.

Nathan Meola
Chris-James Melchizedek

Shush with Alex Albrecht.The shop was transformed: furniture out, rugs and cushions across the floor, a full room lying ...
31/05/2026

Shush with Alex Albrecht.

The shop was transformed: furniture out, rugs and cushions across the floor, a full room lying back in the low light. Alex opened with pitched-down bush poems recorded especially for the night, and built it from there. Jazzlike melodies over earthy rhythms that lift you up and set you down somewhere in a forest.

It’s the energy in the room, an intangible vibe we’re chasing. Patient, atmospheric music, and a crowd that locks in for the entire ride. On this night, we caught it.

Alex’s albums have been on high rotation in the shop since we opened. Do check them out. Melbourne-based, and touring internationally. Gracing our little town with this was no small thing.

Thanks Alex, and our local crew who helped make this night. There’s a real appetite for this in Bellingen.

More to come 🤫

Last month the Bellingen Story Circle was packed to the rafters. Every seat taken, people crowded up against the walls, ...
25/05/2026

Last month the Bellingen Story Circle was packed to the rafters. Every seat taken, people crowded up against the walls, the bookshop holding everything it could.

The story was Iron John. First recorded by the Brothers Grimm, it is the tale of a wild man found lurking at the bottom of a forest pond. Ancient, rusted, feral. He is hauled up, caged, and locked away. And then a young prince, by accident or fate, sets him free.

What follows is an initiation. The boy must leave the safety of the palace and enter the wild man’s world. He must work, fail, disguise himself, descend into the dark. Robert Bly, in his landmark reading of the tale, saw Iron John as a map of masculine development: the journey every young man must take away from the mother’s protection and the father’s approval, down into the deep masculine, the instinctual, the undomesticated. The wild man is not the enemy. He is the guide. But the road is not comfortable, and it is not short.

Nathan Meola’s telling carried us through every descent, and together we crossed every threshold. Elijah Kindred moved between instruments, shaping the story’s wildness and its tenderness in equal measure, the music rising and falling with the old tale’s pulse. This was one to remember.

The next Bellingen Story Circle is this Thursday 28 May. Nathan turns now to one of the oldest love stories in the ancient world — the Greek myth of Cupid and Psyche.

We have been hitting capacity. Book ahead to secure your spot. Tickets via the link in our bio.

💘


Let us introduce you to Foshe. Three masterful musicians, each with their own projects and directions, who come together...
13/05/2026

Let us introduce you to Foshe. Three masterful musicians, each with their own projects and directions, who come together to play fully improvised polyrhythmic jazz. Hard to pin down. A longtime favourite.

Improv gigs are something different. Watching these three communicate non-verbally — through their instruments, a cracked smile, a quick glance, the occasional tongue poke when it gets complicated — makes the room feel alive. One offers a riff, a melody, a fresh count. The others try to catch its rhythm, its vibe, and push it further. No fixed track. No expectation to meet. Just feeling and flowing.

Polyrhythm takes it to another level. Our modern ears are trained on 4/4, the count you bop along to without thinking. But 3/4, 5/8, 7/8, for example, all carry a different feel entirely. And when multiple musicians hold different times simultaneously, something strange happens: the rhythms drift apart, move out of phase, and then synchronise again over larger cycles. Watching the boys navigate this in real time is electric.

Everything you’ll hear online is recorded from previous live improv gigs just like ours. Go find them.

A big thanks to Foshe for coming to play for us at our Tiny Bookshop Concert.

And keep an eye out. They’ll be back fo sho. 🤍


ft.
🎹
🎸 .music
🥁

📷 .vandyke

Last month the Bellingen Story Circle brought us Thousandfurs. One of the most psychologically confronting tales in the ...
27/04/2026

Last month the Bellingen Story Circle brought us Thousandfurs. One of the most psychologically confronting tales in the Grimm canon. One that most retellings quietly set aside, and for good reason. It doesn’t soften what it carries.

A king, grief-stricken after the death of his wife, becomes fixated on his daughter — the only one worthy, he declares, to be his next queen. To escape, the princess makes impossible demands: gowns the colour of the sun, the moon, and the stars, and a cloak sewn from a thousand different furs. When her father meets every demand, she flees into the forest, wrapped in her cloak, her identity buried beneath it.

This is a tale that moves through violation, exile, disguise, and the long, circuitous road back to selfhood. Marion Woodman drew on it as a central thread in Leaving My Father’s House, her landmark work on feminine psychology — reading the princess’s flight and her years in hiding as the soul’s necessary withdrawal before it can be truly known and claimed. The cloak of a thousand furs is not only disguise but protection: the self goes underground until the conditions are right for it to emerge.

What the tale asks, quietly and persistently, is what it costs to become yourself. And what it takes to be truly seen.

Storyteller Nathan Meola carried us through this dense mythic terrain, accompanied as ever by musician Hamzah Mas, who traced the story’s descent into shadow and reemergence into the light.

—

This Thursday 30th April, the Bellingen Story Circle returns with another formidable tale: Iron John, by the Brothers Grimm.

All welcome. Tickets via the link in our bio.

27/01/2026

Our inaugural Tiny Bookshop Concert.
Baran Yildiz & Greg Sheehan.
Watch the full concert via link in bio.

Address

105 Hyde Street
Bellingen, NSW
2454

Opening Hours

Monday 10am - 3pm
Tuesday 10am - 3pm
Wednesday 10am - 3pm
Thursday 10am - 3pm
Friday 10am - 3pm
Saturday 10am - 3pm

Telephone

+61487579204

Website

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