The Seeker and the Master

By Eileen Poldermans

The Family was a cult formed by the notorious Anne Hamilton-Byrne in the 1960s.

Teaching a mix of Christianity, Hinduism and precepts from Western and Eastern religions, Hamilton-Byrne claimed she was the reincarnation of Jesus Christ, attracting numerous adults who were searching for greater meaning in life. Later, she adopted babies into

• Language: English
• Publisher: Busybird Publishing
• Release date: Jul 7, 2023
• ISBN: 9781922954398

Book preview

PROLOGUE

Waiting for the King

The nursing home was an old-fashioned, rambling building; a maze of rooms. As we approached the entrance, I felt trepidation, wondering what Anne would be like now. Would she remember me? It had been 25 years.

Margie, a fellow ex-member of The Family, was by my side. Together, we’d supported each other throughout some of the hardest times in The Family. It was Margie who’d known where Anne was, but I was the one who’d wanted to see her again.

We stepped inside her small room. It was dimly lit and decorated with pictures, including a print of The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci. My eyes rested on a shrunken old lady sitting on a chair, cradling a doll. A wave of sadness washed over me. She was well dressed, and her hair was tightly wound into a topknot on her head, but that was all that remained.

Margie addressed her first and introduced herself, but Anne vacantly looked away.

You remember me, Anne, I looked after the children Uptop at Eildon, she tried again. There was still no response, so Margie turned to me and said, Perhaps it would be better if I let you have time alone with her? and left the room.

I reached for Anne’s hand and asked whether she remembered me, but she didn’t answer. I tried to make conversation, but she rambled on about meeting the King, and wondering if he was waiting in the next room. Occasionally, she smiled and appeared to be pleased by my visit, but the once almighty and powerful Anne was now a shadow of her former self – her mind no longer present, her reign over. I felt no fear, only compassion for the circumstances in which she ended her life - needing to be lifted in and out of bed with a machine after suffering a fracture in a fall.

Looking into her absent blue eyes, I shook my head with pity, remembering how I’d trusted her. I remembered being young and filled with anticipation, driving my car to our first meeting. I could never have known then that Anne Hamilton-Byrne would take control of my life, turn my world upside down and rip my family apart with her promise of salvation.

Where it begins

My entry into the world in the evening of a cold spring day was not a cause for celebration. My mother had already given birth to seven children under the age of ten, far more than the two boys she envisaged when first married. When I was born, my brother was only one year older than me. Overwhelmed and exhausted, the unintended birth of another child caused Mum to have a breakdown. This was the introduction to my first and most important teacher in the earth school, and it was not a welcoming one.

Even though it was not her wish, the family continued to grow until there were twelve children, consisting of eight girls and four boys.

To begin with, our home had not been built for a large family, as it only had two bedrooms with an open veranda at the front where the eldest boys slept. In such a small space, everything was noticed; sharpening our intuitive senses so that we could read the prevailing moods of our parents and older siblings.

As the number of children grew, Dad had a sleepout built at the back of the house, like a dormitory. For years, six of us slept there, with four sleeping in a big double bed - top to tail - at times. It was spartan, with exposed beams to support the corrugated iron roof. In stormy weather, the sound of rain crashing on it, with thunder rumbling and flashes of lightning, made it very scary.

In winter, condensation from the roof dripped onto the beds and we covered them with newspaper to keep them dry. Sometimes, rats came from the fowl house and ran along the beams at night. We could hear them scampering and slipping on the polished linoleum as they darted about.

The worst part of living in the sleepout was the freezing cold in winter, when the dreaded chilblains appeared on my toes. For the first two years, the window frames did not even have glass in them – just flywire. I slept with my sister Heather, two years younger than me, where I made up stories to keep her amused before we fell asleep, cuddling each other. Sometimes we would creep into the kitchen when the older ones had gone to sleep and fill the screw-top lemonade bottles with hot water to warm ourselves. Most of us suffered with whooping cough at some stage. My eldest sister even contracted rheumatic fever.

Heather and I spent much of our time together in a close relationship, sharing our dreams and fears. She was inclined to be cheeky and did not hold back, or have an oversized conscience which was comforting, because I took everything to heart.

My first day at school was a milestone which felt so exciting – it was my first experience in the outside world, and I couldn’t sleep the night before. Arriving with my older sister and brother, full of anticipation, I joined the ‘new ones’ for assembly. The principal, Miss Bignell, who had previously crossed swords with my father when he presided over a school committee meeting, ushered us into a classroom where we stood beside our desks with our schoolbags. We were instructed to say our names aloud, my surname well-known in the school because so many of my brothers and sisters had attended there.

Staring at me for a moment and noticing that I had a case, instead of the prescribed schoolbag, Miss Bignell pounced. Receiving a long lecture about disobeying rules, she made an example of me which suitably impressed the other children, ordering me to tell Mum to follow the rules and buy me a schoolbag on my return home. This was not a good beginning for a first day at school – it was such a let-down!

The next day, I was too afraid to ask to go to the toilet. The horrified teacher noticed a wet patch on the wooden floor where I had been sitting and gave me a sheet of newspaper to scrunch up and rub on the bare floorboards while the other kids smirked and pulled faces at me.

Unprepared for the bullying which was to follow, I soon realised that the girls used anything negative they could find to belittle others. In my case, coming from such a large family gave them ammunition to criticise my parents, saying that they bred like rabbits. Then it became personal. The girls gathered together and scrutinised my appearance. As my eyes are green, they gave me the nickname Cat’s Eyes, or Titch because I was small, saying things like, "Run away, small change, before I spend you’’! However, they paid me one compliment – I had nice lips! The seed of comparison had been planted in my mind.

On the way home from school, we walked down a lane which led to the Catholic school at the other end. There was a lot of ill feeling between Catholics and Protestants in those days. If I happened to be walking alone and encountered Joe, a mean student from the other school would hit and punch me, calling me a Prody Dog because I attended the State School. He did it once too often and I told my older sister, Nancy. She found out where he lived and took me there to confront him.

His father, unshaven, dressed in a dirty singlet and baggy pants, answered the door. He had big muscles and he looked tough, like a boxer. When my sister told him why we had come, he called out loudly in a threatening voice, Joe, get here, and said he would fix the problem. Closing the door, we could hear shouting and crying which made me feel very guilty – now I felt sorry for him! However, the problem was solved.

During my time in third grade, a child named Jennifer, who was most unwell, joined our class. Suffering from a serious heart problem, she needed to rest. I noticed that when she exerted herself too much her lips would become a bluish colour. The teacher enquired whether someone would be kind enough to ‘take her under their wing’ and stay in at playtime and lunchtime to keep her company. Of course, I could not wait to be of service and put my hand up, not realising that would be the end of my break from the classroom for weeks! Unfortunately, Jennifer succumbed to her condition and was unable to continue with schooling. I missed the time we shared together.

Our first sports day proved memorable. The teachers lined us up for a race, and everyone was excited when she blew the whistle to start. Running as fast as I could, I could not keep up with the other children, and came last. Watching as my classmates hugged the winner, making a big fuss of her, I could see that she now had a special place in their estimation. On the other hand, as a result of my failure, I made every excuse not to participate in sports in the future because it felt terrible being a loser!

I befriended a little girl at school named Marjorie, who was not very popular with the other girls. She invited me to come to her home where I could meet her parents during the lunch break as she lived a short distance from the school. We walked down a lane nearby, paved with bluestones to reach the gate which opened onto her backyard, and it was as though she undid the latch into a world of delights. Entering her backyard, there was a pond full of little turtles swimming and flapping in the water. Marjorie said her father sold them in the market to make extra money.

We walked to the back door, and met Marjorie’s mother Margaret - a pale, shy Australian lady who was busily preparing food in the kitchen. There was a delicious aroma in the air from Asian cooking, and I noticed her father and uncle standing at the back of the kitchen eating bowls of fried rice which they rolled into little balls with their fingers. This was so different to home! I discovered they lived in a Chinese Restaurant which fronted onto the main road, and it was obvious that they were poor because their furniture consisted of wooden boxes.

My friendship with Marjorie was secret because Mum was very mistrustful of outsiders, and she discouraged us to have any friends outside of our family. However, I loved going to her place, playing with the turtles, and experiencing a different family setting. Her mother told me how happy she felt to see our friendship grow because people were not friendly once they found out that Marjorie’s father was foreign - often calling her nasty names.

She was very lonely and looked forward to my visits. On one occasion, she showed me a pure white fluffy rabbit skin, with bright sapphire glass eyes, which had been stuffed to look as though it was real. On each visit, I would ask her permission to allow me to play with it, stroking its soft fur and pretending it was alive. Margaret said that she could see that the rabbit meant a lot to me and would consider selling it to me for threepence.

This sounded like a dream come true, so saving my pocket money to pay for it, without thinking about the consequences, I ran home with my beautiful rabbit. Of course, Mum wanted to know where it came from. She was not too pleased when she found out I had been to the Chinese Restaurant, lecturing me for going there without her permission and forbidding me to ever go there again. This hurt Marjorie and I deeply. In obeying Mum’s wishes, it felt like a betrayal of Marjorie’s mother who had befriended and shared her problems with me. However, people thought differently in those days and Mum’s word was law.

***

Occasionally, we welcomed visitors from Sydney, and Mum would find space for them to stay by making room in the sleepout. In the meantime, Mum prepared a bed for us underneath the large dining table where we slept on the floor. One guest, a colourful character named Auntie Miriam, was married to Mum’s brother.

She had a very wrinkled face and tightly permed hair, always having her ciggies and a packet of Bex on hand for her headaches. In her younger days, she lived in a different world to most people - where women had to survive in the only way open to them to earn a living. Sitting on the edge of the bed, telling us naughty rhymes with swear words and the most delightful little chuckle, she would say, ‘Don’t tell your mother!’ We just loved her.

One day, showing her the chilblains on my feet, she told me about a sure cure. Astonished, I asked if it was true. ‘Yes, it really works,’ she replied.

I would try anything to stop the terrible itching and soreness, so one day, all alone in the sleepout, I peed in the chamber pot and stood in it. Auntie Miriam said it had to be warm and fresh. Waiting for the miracle to happen, with my hands held together in an attitude of prayer and gazing heavenwards, my older sister walked in and was aghast at the sight. She could not believe her eyes and called out to Mum who came in, looked at me and said, ‘Oh don’t be so stupid.’

In later life I discovered it was an old folk remedy – but it didn’t work!

Each week, we marched together, and dressed in our best clothes to the attend the Sunday School in the Baptist Church that lay one mile away from our home. Mum took a lot of time in getting our clothes ready: shoes cleaned, and our hair brushed and tied with white ribbons. I loved hearing the stories from the Bible, especially about The Good Samaritan. I wanted to be like Him.

Unlike Robert, my older brother by one year, and Heather, I took religion very seriously. Unfortunately, I absorbed the idea that God was extremely punishing. During one of our religious classes, the teacher told us the story of someone who was about to do wrong, looking left, right, and behind them to make certain nobody could see, but they forgot to look up. God could see everything, and there was no escape!

Of course, this enhanced the feeling of guilt and fear of doing the wrong thing in case God stalked me. The fact that the most important people in my life were also less than tolerant and prone to punishment had something to do with me developing this feeling and attitude.

In such a large family, if we did something wrong, we would soon hear about it from the other brothers and sisters and be told, You are going to get it, or Wait until Dad comes home!

On one unfortunate occasion, after taking a purgative liquorice powder, that was administered each Saturday to keep our gutters clean, I had an unfortunate accident in bed. Everyone knew about it from the reaction of my older sister, who I slept next to that night.

Shamed and upset, especially because Dad found out, I was sent to the bathroom and sat in the bath cleaning myself while he chanted pig, pig, pig repeatedly – he was so disgusted with me. He kept this up for some days when he came home from work at night, and I tried to hide from him. He would say, look out, here comes pig! Where was the mercy that we learnt about in Sunday school?

Slowly, my Inner Critic began to materialise: unforgiving, judging, and relentless.

However, filled with love for Jesus, it felt good walking around our backyard with the Bible, preaching to the chooks about the Kingdom of Heaven and praying to God to have mercy whenever Robert and Heather transgressed - which seemed to be often.

At the end of the year, when prizes were handed out, I won a prize for the best artwork at Sunday School, and the teacher presented a blue book to me with a gold-printed certificate inside the cover.