As I Wander By On My Eternal Journey
1952-1975
My quest for the answers regarding mortality versus immortality began when I was around 10 years old.
I didn’t realise then that it was to be a road that had many possibilities and even more dead ends.
It was 1962 and “The Cold War” was in full swing. I was part of the generation who were later to be named “baby boomers”, our lives were black and white.
There were “goodies and baddies” thrust upon us prepubescent offspring of the post WW2 years. They defined what was morally correct, depending on whose side you looked at life from. There were the guys who wore the white hats and the less desirable guys who who the black ones. Women worked in saloon bars or lived a solitary life doing chores on ‘the ranch”. We were fed a diet sort of like a covert marketing exercise for capitalism and the overt consumerism. Having a cap gun and a Davy Crockett hat was of paramount importance.
The western world was still basking in the glory of the economic growth that followed World War II.
A 10 year old boy should be playing cowboys and Indians or football, cricket or some other competitive sport but I spent a lot of time in my head and on my own.
I had just discovered music which provided a certain solace and companionship that was a comfortable fit for me. I suppose I was pretty happy as far as my limited experience allowed me to be. Life wasn’t too complicated.
That was until I started wondering about my mortality and wondering “Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? My questions were sparked by The Cuban Missile Crisis, the potential of Atomic War and the possibility of my own death and losing all that I could imagine as being real.
I think that around this time I also watched a movie based on a book by Neville Shute called “On The Beach” about the aftermath of war with nuclear radiation wiping out all life on earth.
Here’s a brief precise on the general theme of the movie “After World War III, Australia is the only remaining haven for mankind. However, wind currents carrying lingering radiation all but condemn those on the continent to the same fate suffered by the rest of the world.” The movie was mainly set in Melbourne and there was a haunting scene at the end where the streets of the city were almost bereft of life with people queuing to receive their lethal dose of some sort of poison medicine to kill them before the radiation did, then the streets were empty apart from some rubbish blowing down the road . It left me with a feeling of emptiness and futility that was to have a profound influence on my life.
For the very first time I became aware of my own mortality and the implications of not being part of infinity.
It was a hard concept to grasp as a 10 year old and my limited knowledge and maturity left me at a dead end trying to work out what it would be like “being nothing forever”.
The thought of it filled me with a terror that I never knew could exist.
It was like a deep black hole that I would fall into at night when the lights went out, mental quicksand with no light at the end of the tunnel.
Not a good rabbit hole for a 10 year old to explore.
The so called religion of the western world, Christianity gave me little or no solace, the idea of heaven and hell were so unreal to me that I just didn’t take it into consideration. The idea of losing my awareness of self was as immense as the ocean and engulfed me to the point of losing my identity in the mystery of life. I had no one to discuss my thoughts and fears with. I felt like I must be the only person in the world who allowed themself to get lost in a quagmire of thought, mystery, lack of knowledge and philosophical dead ends.
What I didn’t realise back then was that “not knowing” was far superior to “believing”.
Not knowing led me on a path of discovery.
I must say now that I got a bit lost along the way.
I spent the next 10 years growing up. My friends and peers were always at least 2 years older than I was which presented its own set of complexities but at the same time it led to me being exposed to situations, ideas and experiences that influenced my thinking and lifestyle choices. My rock was my mother, although I wasn’t consciously aware of that at the time. She was just there for me, a bit like the subliminal music in a supermarket. I never really noticed her strength and love, I suppose I just expected it …. without her I possibly would have floundered.
I’d be lying if I said I remember much about my philosophical thoughts between 1962 and 1972. But I did start writing a poem when I was about 16 that started with the line,
“As I wander by on my eternal journey
Into the truth, the unknown force of my mind
I see a body rotting in a dark, silent grave
With no aim but to love and be loved ……… “
These were the years of playing music, making new friends, clumsy relationships with girls, separating out from my parents, drinking, reckless driving and towards the end marijuana and LSD. They were also the years that embraced and included my job as a window dresser which introduced me objectively to the broader world, the war in Vietnam provided a backdrop to my 1960s experience which forced me to make choices which I otherwise would not have had to make. Around 1970 I became a vegetarian, a simple choice and action that drew a line in the sand between me and what I saw as “the main stream”. I was influenced by what I read in the American edition of Rolling Stone magazine as I was by demonstrations against the Vietnam war and the subsequent moratoriums. I read a lot, fantasy, science fiction, faux history (compliments of James A Michener), Krishnamirti, Kahil Gibran. I truly believed that I had escaped the spiritual and intellectual wasteland that surrounded and engulfed me living with my parents in East Bentleigh.
Sometime around 1970 I decided to embrace the counter culture. Notice I said “decided” as opposed to making it a reality. I was playing regular gigs with Adderley Smith Blues Band, I had just got my first car, a 1958 Holden Station Wagon which cost me $200. I was demonstrating against war and conservatism and I was a somewhat shy fringe dweller of Melbourne’s cultural and musical underbelly.
Around this time my world was turned on it’s head. I fell in love. I discovered the heady delights of sex. I became addicted to love and soon after I fell into a quagmire of possessiveness and jealousy. It was like an insidious disease, like being addicted to a drug and I simply let myself get lost in it. I must have been quite intolerable. This went on for what seemed like a lifetime but it must have been only a bit over a year. She finally did me a favour and dumped me.
I must have been around 19 by now, I was still in the band and I finally moved out of home. My poor mum cried her eyes out but I had no compassion. Looking back I now realise that I was so obsessed with myself that I didn’t see the effects my actions had on others.
After Janis kindly broke up with me I met a group of guys who lived in Clayton. This was the beginning of my marijuana period, it’s not all that relevant to this story but towards the end of our friendship I got introduced to a wacky guru type guy who lived in Power St Hawthorn. His name was Dave, not the most exciting name for a guru guy. I visited his house several times and listened to what he had to say, which to be quite honest didn’t make much sense. But the significance of this was that it was my first brush with culty behaviour. Thank goodness it didn’t have enough impact on me to stick around because soon after some very weird stuff happened and a sweet girl I vaguely knew was killed.
I met Flora sometime in 1972. She was 15 (cringe) and I was 20. Meeting her opened the door to a new group of friends. Before too long I moved into a big house in Bank St, South Melbourne with some of her friends. Annie, Ronnie, Dennis and others who I can’t remember now. The meeting with Flora was very significant. It was one of those sliding door moments. By the way, we are still good friends 47 years later. Flora was still going to school when we hooked up. For some strange reason I had no perception that I was far too old to be going out with a school girl. Maybe we were meant to meet or maybe it was just a coincidence. Whichever way I look at it she’s my oldest friend and our lives have impacted each other for almost 5 decades.
We did a lot of recreational drugs, I stopped working at my job as a window dresser at Myer and transitioned into the counter culture. Having said that, my experience in the Display Department at Myer impacted and influenced the rest of my life. Along the way we started a handicraft business with my sister, Netty, moved to a house in the far outer east of Melbourne in a (then) country town called Healesville where we started another handicraft shop and paid $10 rent a week, took quite a few LSD trips, went to the very first Nimbin Aquarius Festival and generally dropped out of mainstream society.
I had moved back to the city after leaving our country haven in Healesville. As I said, my sister, Netty and I had started a handcraft shop in North Caulfield around 1973 called Heironymus Handcrafts, we sold spinning wheels, knick knacks from exotic places like India, Afghanistan and Indonesia and even created hand spun wool for our clients. Thank God my sister was stable because I sure as hell wasn’t. She arrived at the shop every day, travelling on public transport from our parents home in East Bentleigh and created a wonderful “alternative” business. Directly across the road there was a leather working shop called Earthgate run by an amiable guy named Peter Davies.
The chess pieces were falling into place and the characters in the play that was to follow started taking on their roles. I also met John Sullivan, Michael Young and several others either in or on the periphery of Scientology around this time.
This was to be my new group.
Most of these guys were older than Flora and I, they had travelled the world and at the time seemed far more exotic than any friends who had come into my orbit before.
My love of music was still a very important part of my life.
In early 1975 Flora and I ended our relationship. The evil disease of jealousy and the fear of losing someone was ingrained in me.
Summer 1975
I was a freewheeling hippy by this stage of my life. Healesville was over and I was back in the city, living in a tiny room with Nett and David above Earthgate. I lay in bed at night, usually stoned and overfed from the munchies, attempting to read Ouspensky, Gurdjieff and Dianetics – The Evolution of a Science. Not much sunk in.
I think I was looking for a group more than a philosophy.
1975 was a time of transition for a lot of people in my orbit. It was hipper to give up drugs than to keep on taking them. I had a short relationship with a girl named Faye just after Flora and I had broken up. My beard was gone and although my hair was very long and dishevelled I was clean shaven which made romance easier. This was a relationship of passion and convenience. She lived in Wellington St, StKilda and had a bed and a car, both of which I needed. I borrowed her car to drive to Healesville to pick up a few of my possessions. My guitar, amplifier and a few clothes. I left everything else behind, including my record collection and my Dad’s treasured tools that he had unwisely given to me a couple of years earlier.
I was almost ready to cross the park to “The Org”, that mystical place where strange and wonderful things were said to be happening. When I say almost, I mean it literally almost. I was aware that I had 6 weeks to get drugs out of my system so I saved up $75, took a deep breath and walked inside the front door of The Church Of The New Faith (Scientology was still outlawed in Victoria) in Inkerman Rd, North Caulfield. I remember the excitement I felt as I handed over what was for me a huge amount of money to a guy named Norm Newton. I told him that I wanted to do the H.Q.S Course (Hubbard Qualified Scientologist) and that I would be back in 6 weeks to start. I ironically arrived at the same time as James Xenophontos who was playing bass in our band. Norm was so shocked that he just let me walk out the door.
Soon after, on a sunny week day afternoon I hitched out to the Hume Highway. I think I had $10 in my pocket, and the clothing that I wore ….. a pair of jeans, a white singlet and some sort of silky blue jacket that may have once been someone’s dressing gown. I stuck out my thumb and got picked up by a guy in a petrol guzzling yank tank who drove like the devil through the night. We were at the Bulli Pass at dawn and soon after he dropped me in Wollongong. I eventually got a ride to Sydney and arrived at Glebe, mid morning where my friend Anny was staying. Back then Glebe was certainly not gentrified. Glebe was the centre of “alternative” Sydney, full of squats, squatters and seemingly creative, transient people who didn’t seem to know whether they were Arthur of Martha. I was in my element. This is a fascinating story in itself, which I won’t write about here but the month or so that I was there was a blast and Glebe held more in store for me later down the track.
There were many more trips to Glebe to come in the decades that followed.
I was back in Melbourne around March and by my reckoning it had been about 6 weeks since my last LSD adventure. My Scientology journey was about to begin in earnest. Over the next 6 weeks I spent every day “on course” learning the basics of L Ron Hubbard’s philosophy. I was like a kid in a lollipop shop but I was still just a “customer”.
There also existed an inner sanctum, a deeper layer of involvement in this mystical adventure. This was the group that were “on staff”. The bosses were all women, which seemed socially advanced to me. Elaine, the Boss lady was intense. Elaine was an OT (Operating Thetan), one of those mythical creatures that was an inspiration to both “the staff” and “the public”. Elaine was tough, uncompromising and she swore a lot. She seemed to have a disdain for the status quo which made her the perfect figure head. Elaine’s side kick was a rough but charismatic woman named Marion who was a few years older than I was. Other lady bosses were Cherie, Elaine T, Karen, Pat. It was like a group run by a gang of Amazons.
It may have been June 1975 when I “joined staff”. I had started the Hubbard Qualified Scientologists Course in March. This took about 6 weeks to complete. My new job as a Scientology staff member was to recruit new people to become Scientologists. I was the perfect person to do this because I genuinely believed that what I had found would help to create a new world full of love and understanding. You’ve got understand here that I didn’t believe that I had any ulterior motives and that I was doing the right thing. I was in the entrance hall of cultdom. I wanted people to become aware of their spirituality, to communicate freely and to overthrow the warmongering status quo who seemed to be fucking everything up. I had been to the very first Aquarius Festival at Nimbin in Northern New South Wales a couple of years earlier. Ironically, at Nimbin a group of wandering minstrels started each morning off by roaming around the festival grounds singing an “Incredible String Band” ditty which ended with the line “ Find My Way Home”. I had lived the life of a hippy in the Healesville countryside for the prior two years and I had just broken up with my second really serious girlfriend, Flora, who by now had migrated back to the city after coming back from Healesville a few months after me.
Giving up drugs was easier than I thought. I had been on a 2 month rampage of sex, drugs and rock and roll for a few months after Flora and I had split and this sort of got it out of my system. This applied religious philosophy called Scientology was my new answer to succour me through my journey and my next logical step into my life of “alternativeness”.
Between you and me, I wasn’t at all into the idea of training to be an auditor or counsellor. What I felt good about was spreading the word and getting loads of other like minded people on board. The parameters in this job were a lot looser, you sort of had to make it up as you went which suited me right down to the ground.
At the same time as all of this new staff thing was happening I was being embraced by my new friends as a good musician, my guitar playing made an impression on people and made me feel special and important.
By May 9th 1975 our new band Clear Day had enough instrumental music under it’s belt to play live at the 25th anniversary of L Ron Hubbard’s seminal book “Dianetics : The Modern Science of Mental Health”. This anniversary was held at The Malvern Town Hall and was quite the “special moment”. The band decided to get dressed in fancy dress. I wore the costume of a demented jester. God, I wish I had some photos of us. It was bizarre really because at this stage Scientology was going through a transition in Melbourne from the old school guys who frequented the HASI in Spring Street in the city to the new ex hippies who were now getting on board. Ian Tampion and his sweet wife, Judy had been sent back to Melbourne in the early 70’s tasked with getting Scientology up and running again after it had been decimated by the Victorian Enquiry and The Anderson Report. They had set up a centre in Caulfield and this slowly grew into The Church of the New Faith at 724 Inkerman Rd, North Caulfield. There was also a dichotomy between the people who were “on Day” as opposed to those “on Foundation”, the Foundation guys held down day jobs and studied and worked in the evenings and on the weekends. They were far more conservative, had proper haircuts and even wore suits. Scientology had been outlawed in 1965 and 10 years later it was in it’s second Melbourne incarnation and new infancy as The Church of the New Faith, which was what it was called in Melbourne due to The Psychological Practises Act placing severe restrictions on it’s practise. The “day guys” were more a mix of old school, older and straighter people and anarchistic hippies who found their way to Inkerman Rd through the doorway of drug experiences including auditing Book One Dianetics while tripping on acid, The Incredible String Band and Chick Corea’s Jazz Fusion band “Return To Forever”.
We played our (music) set to our multi faceted audience. We played loud and frantic music inspired by the Jazz Fusion bands who we loved so much and which had no beat to dance to, but as I looked out I saw people waltzing to this frantic cacophony of disjointed sound. It was bizarre to say the least and to make matters even more hilarious Flora turned up towards the end of the night stoned out of her head dressed in overalls and with a painted face. Elaine’s teenage son, Sean who was in the division called The Hubbard Communications Office or HCO and was responsible for security excitedly announced that the “The Children of God” had invaded the Dianetics Anniversary. Needless to say, Flora made quite an impact and even more so later in the evening when we had all gone back to John Sullivan’s house. Flora arrived and proceeded to role a joint while sitting in the corner of John’s Caulfield lounge room. Ironically John and Flora are now married and have 2 grown daughters.
My 1975 Autumn was full of spiritual adventures full of naive hope and a child like belief that I was contributing to a peaceful revolution that would ultimately save mankind.
Cherie had a blue Ute (Australian for Utility Truck). She allowed me to drive this car out to people’s houses to spread L Ron Hubbard’s word. My main weapon was my acoustic guitar. I would arrive at peoples homes and ask if they played music “Do you like to jam?” was my main line. For me, music was a not only a tool to get new acolytes on board but also a passion. I loved it so much and I was pretty good at improvising, which sort of worked well for me. Quite a few people became involved in Scientology after playing music with me..
It was a slow integration. I started doing a basic course, had some wins and basically got love bombed. What a boost to your ego “love bombing” is. “You are one of the new ones” “You haven’t been on this planet very long. You are very, very special …..” What a load of crap that was in retrospect. But it worked a treat back then. I remember the day I was recruited to join staff. The person recruiting me was the second in charge. a woman named Marion Glogan. She was damn good at her job and made me feel like a newly anointed king. She made me feel like I was a superstar “being” who had recently descended to planet earth to help save it from the evil hoards. Marion shoved a contract in front of me after love bombing and buttering me up for about an hour. I asked “What is staff?” Her answer was something like “Fuck that, everyone who’s anyone is on staff”, I was being sold by a master sales person. She was totally, 100% in control. She made me feel majestic and I felt like I was in control and what I was about to do was my decision and that it was on my very own determinism …….. not hers, which it certainly was. I just sat there like a bull with a ring through his nose and moved in whatever direction I was led in. Looking back now I cannot believe I was so gullible but I do understand the mechanics of the “recruitment” now. I was a fully fledged Hubbard Qualified Scientologist having just completed my 6 week course. I had learned about the basics of Scientology, I had done the communication drills during which I had exploded out of my body like some volcano in the ring of fire. I think that there was a covert step on the course checksheet which was “going to the recruiter”. I had nothing to lose. I had been arriving at The Org ( the official name of “the group” every morning just before 9a.m, five days a week, eight hours a day. I was being embraced by the other new Scientologists who were egging me on. I felt a bit like I had found my home and my family.
As soon as I finished my HQS Course I joined the Public Dissemination Division, also known as Div 6. My boss was a woman named Cherie Patterson whose Mum was Australian Childrens writer and artist, Peg Maltby. This seemed to make things even a bit more romantic. This was a logical step from my drug taking hippy years as the target group for Scientology was just that. … young alternative people who were searching for answers. It was all about magic, spirits, exiting your body, remembering your past lives and saving the planet from the evil grasp of the conservative capitalists.
