The Sydney Morning Herald from Sydney, New South Wales, Australia • Page 28

NEWS REVIEW 28 Ttiir Sydney Morning Herald Saturday, December 9, 1995 WEEK IN REVIEW A guru for gu I 4 th llible A medical tribunal has been hearing evidence this week of the drug addiction of a northern beaches cult leader, Stuart Walker. Cult investigator DAVID MlLLlKAN writes about the hold Walker has over his followers. -mi A It 4 ''t -V fx r-b It Hfv that he had a form of divinity. MONDAY: Nineteen people injured, 16 seriously, when two gas explosions rock the shopping centre at Kogarah Railway Station Federal Government's four-year, $400 million plan for industry development includes scheme to teach school students how to set up businesses Australian share-market soars to highest mark in nearly two years. TUESDAY: Federal Government says there will be no retreat in the face of plans by major conservation groups to campaign against Government's national forest protection package France's political and industrial crisis escalates, with the country's two biggest unions joining forces to broaden the nationwide strike Corporal punishment to be outlawed in all NSW schools with threats to deregister any private school that breaches new guidelines.

WEDNESDAY: Federal Government to let banks invest directly in small and medium-sized businesses under $460 million innovation plan for industry Sections of Sydney's Lebanese community are suspected of links with the Islamic terrorist movement Hezbollah, says security alert sent to Australian overseas missions Appeal by France's Prime Minister fails to prevent crippling stoppages growing across country. THURSDAY: Record growth of 112,000 jobs in November reinforces Federal Government's confidence in the strength of the economy Claim that assassination attempt on Yasser Arafat averted when leader of Islamic Jihad killed by Mossad in October Author Salman Rushdie in Sydney lor the first time since being driven into exile by Iran death threats. FRIDAYtCourt of Disputed Rttunrsorders by-election in" the north Queensland seat of Mundingburra, threatening Labor's hold on power in the State Property developers estimate cost of Federal Aboriginal Affairs Minister Robert Tickner's involvement in the llindmarsh Island bridge affair at $15 million. to me and said: "Now turn away please." I did as I was told. That evening, he smoked compulsively, getting through a packet of Camel non-filters in the four hours that I was with him.

Later he explained that he had been told to smoke by a Tibetan holy man. He said he didn't like it but because he had such goodness in his cells, nothing evil was able to penetrate them. During the evening I met Dr Zoglmeyer, Maria Sauchella, 34, and daughter Charlie, 7. Kerry Williams, 48, arrived exhausted with her two daughters, Casia, 7, and A nook, 16. Williams is the curator and manager of Maruku, an Aboriginal handicraft and art cooperative at Uluru.

Kerry and Anook were due to leave with Walker the next day on his journey to see the whales in Alaska. Walker sat on an extraordinary throne, a large armchair painted silver and partly covered in tin. He drank beer, smoked Camels, and put his followers through their paces, demanding that they tell me who he was. Dr Zoglmeyer sat on the carpet beside him. Occasionally he reached out and stroked her hair.

As he did, her face filled with joy and she looked up at him with devotion. The other adults sat around, looking at him adoringly. After about an hour sitting around the throne, he leant forward and asked me: "Would you like to play the game of life?" IT involved me standing, taking off my jacket and remaining still. He came behind me saying that he could see two black objects within my body. He said that in a previous life I had been with two Aboriginal women and he was taking out the pain of that experience.

From behind me, he placed his left hand on my right shoulder, opened the palm of his left hand and pushed the of his fingers into my back. He said: "Open your mouth, and breathe in." He pushed vigorously into my back, anc began He took in a series of deep breaths and snorted through his nose. It is believed to be a way of breaking open the "etheric body" and allowing a more direct form of communication. His hand in my back began to shake, he made another loud snorting noise and said in a calm voice: "You can minds, predict the future, and says he has been given the Christ-like role of taking the suffering of the world on his shoulders. On an audio tape of one of his sessions, he says: "I am manifesting Christ and I am the Lord Matraya Buddha." He tells one member of The Pod: "You were with me when I walked this Earth as the Christ." Walker's interest in drugs was not just for himself.

Former Pod member Linda Thompson, 42, tells of one time on a whale trip in September, 1994 when Walker, with Dr Zoglmeyer present, injected her five times in the breast with the local anaesthetic zylocaine. Walker told her he needed to deaden the area to "work" with her and remove "thought forms" that she suspected were present. On the same trip, a current Pod member, a 29-year-old taxi driver, told the group that Walker had injected her with zylocaine, for the same reasons, in the breast and the clitoris. I first met Walker in July at his home overlooking Mackerel Bay at Palm Beach. He was due to travel to Alaska the next day in search of some whales.

Over the past four years, Walker has taken his group on trips to the Great Australian Bight to commune with the Southern Right whales which come there to calf. He charges them $3,500 a week and he remains there for four weeks. He told me that whales are spiritual beings, which talk with him at an "inter-cellular" level He was wearing a grey loose-fitting shirt, black jeans and brown R. M. Williams boots which needed a polish.

His eyes were hooded; he looked and sounded stoned, and had a five-day stubble. He wore an outlandish Mongolian fur hat, which made him sweat in the Sydney heat He appeared on edge, and turned to me suddenly and said: "I had to have a bong before you came. I was nervous." He picked up a nulla-nulla resting against the wall, and said: "I am the only white man in the world allowed to have this object It's got powerful men's business in it You can look for a short time and then I must ask you to turn away." He picked it up, showed it 1 "HF. first time I 'saw him I saw the Christ in his eyes. That's all I wanted during the 24 years I was in the convent.

That's all I ever wanted. I felt as though at last I had met the Christ." Former Josephite nun Claire Hickey is describing Stuart Walker, a self-professed psychic healer who is the charismatic leader of a group he calls The Pod. She goes on: "I see the pure essence of Christ in him day in and day out in a way that I cannot question. I see it through his eyes. He doesn't judge.

Everyone else judges endlessly. He tells the truth; it can be very confronting but the next minute he is a friend." The people I talked with in The Pod are all convinced that Walker has a form of divinity. His lover, Dr Brigitte Zoglmeyer, told me: "He is a genius. He's the only person in the world who can take me to levels which other human beings can never experience." Stuart Walker's cult is facing tough times. This week, Dr Zoglmeyer, 31, has been before the NSW Medical Tribunal, accused of feeding Walker's addiction to pethidine and morphine and prescribing and administering the anaesthetic ketamine, which can have hallucinogenic effects.

Following a 60 Minutes report, Mona Vale police have stepped up an investigation into the cult and the Department of Community Services has interviewed the parents of the eight children associated with The Pod. Walker, 38, has almost absolute power over the lives of the 18 women, nine men, and 1 1 children in The Pod. He claims to commune with whales, have the power to cure diabetes, Alzheimer's disease and Down syndrome. He also claims that he has increased the length and width of his penis. Dr Zoglmeyer told me that he had brought her back from the dead one night following a fall from the balcony of his house.

Suzctte Underwood, 38, told me that Walker healed her broken back and caused her to grow more than 5cm taller. Walker himself told me that he can read AUST KALI A urn Cult leader Stuart Walker breathe out now." He repeated the operation on the other side of my back. When he came around the front, I asked him what he'd been doing. He didn't answer me, except to say that he could feel my chakras (supposed focal points of energy in and around the body). Standing beside me, he held his hand over my head, then my chest, and stomach and groin, saying that he could feel the aura of the chakras.

He made some comment to indicate that my chakras were in reasonable balance, then returned to his throne and assumed a meditative pose. Walker rents a $750-a-week house overlooking Palm Beach and has a reputation in the area of being a big spender. Adults in the group give one-tenth of their incomes to Walker and pay him $150 for the first half-hour and $50 for each half-hour following for one-on-one sessions with him. These sessions consist of intense psychological questioning by Walker and explorations of "past Most niehts he can be found at northern beaches restaurants with members of The Pod, who are expected to pick up the bills. He is well known at La Playa in Avalon and The Beach Road in Palm Beach.

The manager of one restaurant said: "Most of my waitresses refuse to serve him. But you can't beat the money. He usually runs up a bill of $700 or more." Walker's followers include his followers were convinced teachers Richard Andrew, 35, and Anne Baltrop. 40, Dale Jennings, 35, a social worker, Carmel Hook, 35, a nurse at Royal North Shore, and Dr Zoglmeyer. Walker's former lover, Angela Disher, the mother of his daughter, Sara, 7, lives in another group house.

Walker was born in Uganda to an Australian mother from Adelaide and an English father who managed the port at Mombasa in Kenya. They married late in life and after living in Africa for the first eight years of his life, the family returned to Adelaide. Walker talks much about his uncle, Sir Russell Madigan, prominent member of the mining establishment in South Australia. Walker told me that he believed he was destined for great things from an early age. But he was never able to find the avenue for expressing it until he studied rebirthing at the Emmaus Centre in Adelaide in 198889.

He quickly developed a reputation as a healer. It was the former nun Claire Hickey who brought him to Sydney in. 1989 to run a series of rebirthing classes in the Blue Mountains. He has remained here since. Walker admitted using the drug ketamine five to seven times a day for nearly a year, when I met him.

Ketamine is a short-acting anaesthetic used mainly in third-world countries and has the reputation of creating dark and ominous hallucinations in those who use it Walker told me of some horrific images he had recalled while under the influence of ketamine. He said he was born on a large farm outside Kampala in Uganda. His family had 50 servants and he had several nannies. One day his nanny took him to a Masai village which he claimed was on the outskirts of Kampala. (However, my research shows there are no 0 i Photograph courtesy of CHANNEL 9 appeared before tribunal.

blood, it was getting in my eyes; Then I was pulled back and then pushed in again." Then, Walker said, the witch doctor made him perform oral sex on him and sodomised him. He said: "I was cleaned up and taken baclc home and I have not been able to remember it until now." He told me that he had taken ketamine to try to relive the experience and recover from iL Dr Zoglmeyer was sitting at the table with us, nodding and shaking her head in sympathy with the story. I said: "I have, heard of ketamine; it was popular in the '70s and there was a film about it" Dr Zoglmeyer responded, nodding vigorously: "It is called Altered Walker became animated. "No, no, it's crap. They don't know what they're talking about I had it every day," he said.

Tlie Rev Dr David Millikan. Uniting Church minister, writes about new religious movements and cults. He spent two months getting to know Stuart Walker while researching a 60 Minutes doeumenxary. II Uunceuon. TrtI amiable 14IJS TAS No (MHWAMCT TOV SSO 'I iff A RW7T Oi, AUSTRALIA Land and Water Resources Research and Development Corporation BOARD MEMBERS mi and youi page If iw a Dr Brigitte Zoglmeyer (left) Masai villages near Kampala.) At this village he claimed that he saw his nanny horribly killed by a witch doctor.

Walker re-enacted the killing, plunging his left hand to his groin and, as if holding a knife, pulling it slowly to his sternum. I asked: "Do you mean, you saw her disembowelled?" He nodded. He place his both hands to his chest and made the action of tearing open the chest cavity. He said: "He put his hands in here and ripped the chest open and pulled out the heart" Continuing with the motions, he said: "He gnawed at the heart, while it was still pulsing and alive. He -bit off a piece and chewed it like this." He made an exaggerated display of eating and then spat across the table.

"He spat it in my face. Then he took my face like this." He put a hand to the back of his head and lurched over until his head was on the table. "I was only three and a half. He pushed my head into the blood and held it there until I choked and could not breathe. I was taking in So contact your local licensed travel or call Ansett Australia now on 13 13 44.

person, twin shr es Sydney. Canberra. Adelaide. Hobart Lk No 2 TA 000827. ACT No 244Dl.

SA No Mill. 0 11 jTk It agent may lose I (I our ti glint to vote The Land and Water Resources Research and Development Corporation Selection Committee is seeking applications to fill six part-time positions on the Board of the Corporation. The Corporation is a Commonwealth funded Statutory Authority. Its chief objectives are to provide overall national leadership in land, water, vegetation and related research and development. Key tasks of the Corporation are to stimulate, coordinate and fund research and development activities in relation to the nation's land, water, and vegetation resources.

Candidates must have expertise in one or more of the following fields: commodity production, processing and marketing management and conservation of natural resources science, technology and technology transfer environmental and ecological matters administration of research and development economics finance and business management. The Selection Committee is required to choose from the available candidates such persons as will best ensure that the Directors of the Corporation collectively possess an appropriate balance of expertise in as many as possible of the above fields. As part of the Government's commitment to gender equity, the Primary Industries and Energy portfolio encourages applications from women to achieve the Commonwealth Government's goal of greater participation of women in portfolio decision making. Remuneration and any prescribed allowances for Directors are determined by the Remuneration Tribunal. Appointments would normally be for three years.

Applications setting out career and personal details, including the relevance of one's particular skills and experience against the above competencies, should be sent to: The Presiding Member Land and Water Resources Research and Development Corporation Selection Committee c- Land Resources Division Department of Primary Industries and Energy CPO Box 858 CANBERRA ACT 2601 Attention: Mr Lionel Wood Additional information may be obtained through the Internet URL http:www.dpie.gov.aulwrrdchome.html. Readers who do not have access to the Internet may obtain further information by contacting Mr Lionel Wood, Land Resources Division, Department of Primary Industries and Energy on (06) 271 6660. Applications close at 5.00pm on 30 January 1996. if That's riyht. Your name will he taken tiff the electoral roll if you've changed address recently and haven't updated your enrolment.

And your riht to vote may no with it. So don't turn the. page yet. Read on and make sure you can have your say in r- tututv elections. Why is this happening? As part of our procedures to ensure that the electoral roll is kept accurate and up-to-date, we knock on doors periodically, all across the country.

When we come to a hou.se with new occupants, we enrol the new residents office, fill in your new details and send it back to us in the reply-paid envelope. Or you can go to any electoral office and fill out the form then and there. Update now and you won't be fined. Remember it's compulsory for all Australian citizens aged 18 or over to enrol and vote. But if you update your enrolment now or enrol for the first time, you won't face a fine.

So now you know the facts, go ahead and turn the page. Thanks. and try to get a forwarding address for the previous occupants. This is so that we can write to them and help them change their address on the roll. Often, however, we don't know where the previous occupants have moved to, and so, after a period of time, we must take them off the electoral roll.

So, if you've moved recently without letting us know, this may be about to happen to you. What can you do! No worries it's really quite simple. Just re -enrol now at your new address -pick up an enrolment form at any post Two nights accommodation in Melbourne at the peak of the stocktake sales, a special 'Shopping Kit' including discount vouchers at Melbourne's leading retailers and return airfare all for $199. This is the bargain of the century. We even have a Beauty and the Beast option for an extra $89.

Ask for details. Some conditions do apply and the strictly limited booking period ends 22I29S. H.S$3L AnsettAustralia Extra n.ghu available Pncej shown to 7196 Ansett Australia NSW ---Mnii '-Jr.