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Australians in Scientology

Carmel

Crusader
Wonderful! Love it. More!

I think it's wonderful too. I wasn't around in Sydney in the "Lee St" days (I first walked in to the org at Castlereagh St, the day they were moving in), but when I've heard the odd story about those old days, they've made me smile, just like this one from mysterysandwich.

Welcome to ESMB, woke up. :)
 

mysterysandwich

Patron with Honors
Kevin and Linnah

Nice description, mate, I found myself grinning all through the reading... spot on! :)
And, yes, I want to hear more!

….. trying to recall the opening lines in a lecture given by Ron…one I heard somewhere on the Levels where he says to the audience something like:

”None of you have communicated to more than two people in your entire lifetime……..Now, I am not saying it’s that many (general laughter), but no more than two.
The way to tell if you have really communicated with someone, is you remember them with affection.”

You’re grinning while reading? Well, I’m smiling while writing :)-surprised at just how fond my memories of those two are turning out to be.

Just the fact they chose to embark on the journey they did, for instance-taking a fishing boat down the length of Indonesia…..well, I think it is important to not gloss over it. How many people are game enough to do that? Not many, I know.

Yep. They were quite the couple.

Incidentally, Kevin now has a studio in Boca Raton, Florida.

http://www.kevinmcpherrin.com/about.htm
 

mysterysandwich

Patron with Honors
Carola

Nah . . . the original Sydney Org was in 110 Bathurst Street. HCO was set up there in around February/March 1960, and the HASI formally installed in April. I forget the name of the ol' gal who was the HCO Sec. but the first two HASI tech execs were Ross Turnbull and Ivis Lampert (later Bolger) These guys came up from Melbourne while I (with Carola and Saima below) were in Melbourne doing our HPA.

Cable Hill, Carola Veber, Saima Illison (later married Peter Gallop) and myself were the gang who began the center (late 1958 early 1959) that morphed into the org. The original location of the activity was Palings Studios (down by Martin Place and George St.)

RogerB

Carola Veber? Later to become Carola Heins (sp?)
 

mysterysandwich

Patron with Honors
Ah yes...the valence parties :)

I knew the McPherrin's but never directly worked with them as I was Fdn (evening/WE) staff and they were Day staff. But they used to throw HUGE fancy dress parties, with the theme:

"Come in your favorite valence"

WOW, did that ever get some action, there were princesses, warriors, insects, etc etc etc - all 100% "in valence".

And one party was suddenly changed in venue, I later found out because their big waterbed had sprung a major leak and flooded the apartment below, and they had to change apartments rapidly...

Great fun!

Regards, Allen

Yep! we all had a lot of fun at those!
 

scooter

Gold Meritorious Patron
It didn't ALL stop in the seventies - some here will remember Dave Drake from Syd Day in the eighties.

Dave became a scio then did the trans-Siberia railway to Europe then went to the US and managed to "wander" into somewhere in LA and look at the then-unreleased KTL, LOC and various other things before being found and bonded for (I think) $1/2 million.

Dave and I had a credible plan to crash the Prime Minister's New Years Eve party on the shores of Sydney Harbour - we probably would've gotten away with it too as Dave had that ability to go somewhere and appear he really belonged there - when he did his Sunshine Rundown he had been walking the streets of Sydney and wound up a long way from the org and an off-duty limo stopped and offered him a lift back to the org. Dave of course accepted the lift from this total stranger.:D

We ended up putting it off the first year and, when the second year came, he'd left Sydney. Last time I saw him he was in Tokyo then he got declared there for trying to get money back from staff he'd helped out with their rent. Hope you make it here sometime, mate.:thumbsup:

We did a few parties in our time and had lots of fun - there were a lot in the very early eighties.:happydance:
 

RogerB

Crusader
I think You're Right

Carola Veber? Later to become Carola Heins (sp?)

Yeh, that name seems to ring a bell. Her husband was a printing ink salesman.

Carola and I were an "item" during our time doing the Sydney center thing and in Melbourne for our HPA. Very pretty kid with lovely dark, very present eyes . . . when she looked at you, you really knew she was there. Her parents were German immigrants, and it is possible she was born in Germany.

She had been the secretary/personal assistant to the infamous Ken Dyer (or is it Dwyer) when I met her in 1958.

After the HPA, she audited in Melbourne and at one time became an H. Area Sec., not sure now whether it was Syd or Mel. When I was in Mel from around 1962 onwards, she was in Syd and holding the show on the road almost single-handedly.

She was/is quite a girl. Quite a powerhouse, lovely person. The sort of person that made the old days so wonderful, so fun, and so much a benefit to folks.

Rog
 

mysterysandwich

Patron with Honors
McP's

Wonderful! Love it. More!

Think their first place was in an apartment in Coogee, practically on the beach. Probably that was one of their main criteria for livability-proximity to the sand and water-which is not that difficult (or at least it wasn’t then) in Sydney.

The Org was in Bondi Junction at the time, in an old house right at the junction of New and Old South Head Roads. That’s a little ways from the nearest beach at Bondi but a great location nevertheless. Still, Coogee was a fair hike.

Later they rented a big house just a block from Clovelly Beach, up above just behind the cliffs. That became the destination of choice for all-in part because it was a big house and lots of people shared rooms there at one time or another-but probably more because the atmosphere was so laid-back. You just dropped in either to visit or to go to the beach, or to party. There was ALWAYS somebody there.

Kevin made prints and there were some framed, hanging on the wall. I remember one especially, done in the old Japanese style depicting waves and yin and yang symbology.
And Linnah would do a lot of tie-dyes. The kitchen was sort of a workplace on weekends for creations. Apart from a chesterfield couch and beanbag chairs, the living room was pretty much devoid of furniture. Just a big, carpeted space opening out onto a deck.

The beach was great too. Just a short walk down the street, around the corner and down along a footpath right to the sand. Clovelly is a small beach too and was quite private.

They kept the house in Clovelly even after the org moved to Lee Street in the city. That made the commute a long one but the beach was the thing. Kevin had a small Honda motorcycle to make the trip. A lot of us had something similar too. We didn’t need a car in Australia because we could ride practically every day of the year. Besides, we would never have found a place to park in the city back then.

More than a few times, when we weren’t riding and especially if we left the org late, we would walk all the way back home, taking a short cut through Centennial Park. Not as a group necessarily, just on our own or with another. It just seemed quite safe then. It was a walk of more than an hour or even two but the park was huge and there was NO ONE else about at that time of night as the park was officially closed after sunset.

I lived in that house for a short while about in 1975 during the winter in a room that housed no fewer than three other guys. No kidding. That’s another story in itself.

Linnah was the course sup at Lee Street and Kevin a reg. I think Tours got all the commissions though. If not, then most of it.

Kevin and Linnah, like the rest of us, existed way below the poverty line.

Moksha was born, as far as I know, in true Dianetic form-silently. Or at least as much as was possible. And she had a lot of barley water-just like Ron wrote about for his own kids. I can’t say how much she benefited from this but probably a lot. I know she was not a fussy baby or toddler at all. Very quiet, like her mother. Come to think of it, I don’t recall Moksha crying at all Google her now and you’ll see she turned out very beautiful-with her mother’s eyes and remnants of her father’s nose. Striking.

Linnah didn’t bother with things like strollers but opted for a papoose-like sling, carrying the baby in front. A papoose may not be an inaccurate description either because I found her/their approach to child-rearing very reminiscent of the native way-without interference of any kind. And not to say that Moksha was “raised” by an extended family as such, but she had a lot of adults around her very early in life, sharing space and activities. I was always curious as to how she might have turned out with this influence in her early life.
 

mysterysandwich

Patron with Honors
Incarceration-for Kevin McP

Wonderful! Love it. More!


The old YMCA used to be on Castlereagh St in the city, close to where the org is now. I found out they had a fitness class three nights a week and mentioned it to Kevin. The two of us ended up going down there at 5:30 those days after work and we got into pretty good shape. There was a half hour or so or running and calisthenics and a half hour of basketball. We couldn’t convince anyone else to come along which was a shame because almost every post in the org was a sedentary one and a lot of people smoked. Sitting in an auditing chair day after day with no exercise took its toll.


Poverty kind of catches up to you eventually. Or at least it did for Kevin and Linnah.
Kevin got arrested one day for unpaid parking fines and Linnah had to do the rounds with a hat trying to collect enough money from the other staff to bail him out. Phyll Stevens decided it was such a bad PR scene that she had him routed off staff until he could get his situation in order. That was probably the best thing that could have happened, as it turned out.

You have to understand that we in the org had gotten pretty used to living on virtually no income to speak of so just being able to go out and get a regular minimum wage job would be viewed as a huge bonus. And I suppose Kevin could have done just that, but he chose to go out on his own. He had an idea and ran with it.
This was back when T shirts were the rage and Kevin, being an artist with experience in silkscreening, figured he could silkscreen designs on t shirts and sell them on the street or in the park. He would do his own designs, build the screen and print the tshirts himself.

And it worked. They sold well.
But that was just the start.

In the course of all this, Kevin got the idea of marketing Tshirts to businesses such as boutiques and restaurants. The angle was he would use theirs or design a new logo for a business and sell them on the idea of buying a quantity of tshirts with that same logo that they could either sell or give away. Advertising for them.
He got some clients but didn’t have enough money to buy enough tshirts in bulk.
He approached me for $100 (and a number of other people), saying he needed it only for a short time, like a week or so, and would promptly pay it back. So I and I don’t know how many others lent him what we could and….true to his word, he paid us all back in full and on time. And the idea took off.

Soon he was taking minimum orders for 100 t shirts at a time and their kitchen turned into a mini factory. Linnah was screening shirt after shirt, piles and piles of them, screening each, placing each in front of an electric heater to dry briefly, then doing the next one.
The money started rolling in.
Of course, their living expenses did not change significantly and as they were accustomed to living on so little then, so it didn’t take long until……
Kevin had paid up in advance to Full OTVII for himself and Linnah, put aside enough for the trip to England AND paid for (in cash) a Porsche to be picked up at the factory in Germany when they arrived!

Kevin tells the story of going to the Auto show in Sydney shortly after finalizing the deal on his own car, and, seeing on display the same model he had just bought, climbed over the barrier to sit inside it.

You don’t do that at an auto show. Especially not if you are dressed rather non-descriptly as Kevin was at the time.
Salesmen take great offense to that.
One hustled over to chase him out but Kevin kept his cool, choosing to remain inside in spite of the man’s protests.
“I just bought one or these,” he says.

Of course the salesman didn’t believe him, threatening to make a scene. But another salesman, recognizing Kevin by this time, came over to greet him, thereby confirming his assertion of ownership.

“You can sit in there as long as you want”, he says.
Kevin says you never saw anyone change their attitude so fast as that first guy-from snobbery to servility. Or words to that effect. You get the picture.

That sure felt good, he says! :)
And I believe him.
 

woke up

Patron
McP's

Mystery Sandwich,
Your recall is superb! It brings to light those memories that are there but hidden from view then voila! Oh, yeah! I remember that!
Thank you, and please don't stop :D
 

Carmel

Crusader
Mystery,

I'm thinking that the house you mentioned in Clovelly was the same one I lived in, in the early 80's. Was it Melrose Pde? If so, then that same house was a haven for staff members for years. :)

A lot of us had bikes then too, so the commute to Castlereagh St wasn't too bad....and besides, a couple of us worked at the Clovelly pub as a moonlight job, so that was handy, as was the beach......a great place to "chill", even though the only time for "chilling" just about, was in the early hours of the morning.

I'm enjoying all the scoop, thanks. :thumbsup:
 

Panda Termint

Cabal Of One
Mystery Sandwich,
Your recall is superb! It brings to light those memories that are there but hidden from view then voila! Oh, yeah! I remember that!
Thank you, and please don't stop :D
Yes, I agree!
I'd forgotten all about those hours spent sweating over silk-screened T-shirts! :D
 

scooter

Gold Meritorious Patron
There were a few staff who did that for living expenses on Sydney Foundation org too, although I wasn't one of them.

Brings back memories.:)
 

mysterysandwich

Patron with Honors
I'm thinking that the house you mentioned in Clovelly was the same one I lived in, in the early 80's. Was it Melrose Pde? If so, then that same house was a haven for staff members for years. :)

A lot of us had bikes then too, so the commute to Castlereagh St wasn't too bad....and besides, a couple of us worked at the Clovelly pub as a moonlight job, so that was handy, as was the beach......a great place to "chill", even though the only time for "chilling" just about, was in the early hours of the morning.

I'm enjoying all the scoop, thanks. :thumbsup:

Say....almost certainly it would be the same house. It WAS on Melrose Parade (if I can just recall the number....hmmm...)
Makes sense that the house would have been turned over to or taken over by others who were still living there when the McPherrins left.

If walls could talk.....
And why is any of this interesting or important? Well, to me it makes it real that the people-individuals and their relationships with other individuals-and the fact that they have lives and experiences and basically are doing the best they can with what they have regardless of their successes or failures or achievements or lack thereof, are what makes or what IS the organization.

Scientology to me is no more or no less than the sum total of the individuals in it-whether they came before or after us.
My "favorite" pcs were those (then)old-timers. People from the 50's and '60's who were brought up the hard way in the early days, those who pioneered the processes and the building of the organizations. Most had dedicated their lives to doing this but most were also used up, burnt out and spit out by the time I came in.

In my naivety, I wanted to salvage them, thinking that if they just got their cases handled with the “new” standard tech, then all would be well. And sure, we audited many, and they got wins, but they still remained on the outside looking in. Just as so many of us did from the ‘70’s. And the ‘80’s, etc, etc

It doesn’t say much for a philosophy intent on saving the planet when they cannot salvage their own members.

What I have witnessed so much is the complete failure to recognize individuals and their contributions. Worse, both they and their contributions were rejected, disparaged, made nothing of.
The simplest concept that all auditing is for the pc, for instance, got lost somehow.

Scientology tried to manage the forest by ignoring and/or destroying all the trees in it.

I thought on this a lot.
But I am not trying to resurrect the organization here. Or the past.

I am just sharing stories about people I like and knew back then-sharing the fact that they were and are important to me. And discovering in the process examples of the threads that somehow connect us all.
 

RogerB

Crusader
Nice, Nice Post!

Say....almost certainly it would be the same house. It WAS on Melrose Parade (if I can just recall the number....hmmm...)
Makes sense that the house would have been turned over to or taken over by others who were still living there when the McPherrins left.

If walls could talk.....
And why is any of this interesting or important? Well, to me it makes it real that the people-individuals and their relationships with other individuals-and the fact that they have lives and experiences and basically are doing the best they can with what they have regardless of their successes or failures or achievements or lack thereof, are what makes or what IS the organization.

Scientology to me is no more or no less than the sum total of the individuals in it-whether they came before or after us.
My "favorite" pcs were those (then)old-timers. People from the 50's and '60's who were brought up the hard way in the early days, those who pioneered the processes and the building of the organizations. Most had dedicated their lives to doing this but most were also used up, burnt out and spit out by the time I came in.

In my naivety, I wanted to salvage them, thinking that if they just got their cases handled with the “new” standard tech, then all would be well. And sure, we audited many, and they got wins, but they still remained on the outside looking in. Just as so many of us did from the ‘70’s. And the ‘80’s, etc, etc

It doesn’t say much for a philosophy intent on saving the planet when they cannot salvage their own members.

What I have witnessed so much is the complete failure to recognize individuals and their contributions. Worse, both they and their contributions were rejected, disparaged, made nothing of.
The simplest concept that all auditing is for the pc, for instance, got lost somehow.

Scientology tried to manage the forest by ignoring and/or destroying all the trees in it.

I thought on this a lot.
But I am not trying to resurrect the organization here. Or the past.

I am just sharing stories about people I like and knew back then-sharing the fact that they were and are important to me. And discovering in the process examples of the threads that somehow connect us all.

Nice post, John.

It really conveys the sentiments of the good guys who made the show worthwhile, while pointing out why the exercise was ultimately futile in the face of the way the organization is run.

It was good to read.

RogerB
 

woke up

Patron
I am so moved and really loving this thread. We seem to have enhanced one another's lives more than we knew. Thank you all :D
 
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