by John Pinkney
‘Recently, one of my friends gave birth to a baby in an Adelaide hospital. In the early hours of Monday morning I had a vivid dream of a hospital and a difficult birth. It was later confirmed to me that the baby had been born by Caesarean section, at the same time as my dream.
‘But my eeriest premonition was when I visited Martindale Hall in Mintaro [South Australia]. Some days earlier I had dreamed of being inside a large building with a big entrance and sweeping staircase. When we arrived at Martindale Hall I recognised that staircase immediately. But other things about the layout of the house were also familiar, especially the quarters at the rear.
‘Oddest of all was the fact that in my dream, the building’s lights had suddenly been extinguished. The same thing happened in reality. When we arrived at Martindale Hall the owner apologised to us and explained that, because of renovation work, all the lights had failed 10 minutes earlier.
‘I believe that I’ve inherited this “ability” from my mother, who, as a young woman, dreamt about her brother’s motorcycle crash before it happened. She told no one about this premonition because she felt nobody would believe her.
‘But when a premonition comes true, it certainly makes you think about the nature of time and destiny.’
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The Nostradamus File
NOSTRADAMUS – the seer quoted by Barry Jones in an astonishingly timely way – was born Michel de Notredame in 1503 at St Remy, Provence. A physician who dabbled in astrology, his fame largely rests on his book Centuries, a collection of prophecies in verse.
Many of these predictions are vague and open to varying interpretations, but others are harder to dismiss. In 1559 King Henry II of France was mortally wounded when a jouster’s lance entered his right eye – an accident Nostradamus had predicted in Centuries, which said a French royal personage would:
Die on-a warlike field, in a single combat, Of two wounds, one of which will pierce his eye.
Michel de Notredame’s book also foretold the Great Fire of London, which would occur a century after his death:
The blood of the just shall be required of London, Burnt by fire in thrice twenty and six. The old cathedral shall fall from its place And many buildings shall be destroyed.
The controversial clairvoyant attached accurate dates to several of his predictions – Correctly asserting, for example, that the first French republic – born of the Revolution-would be proclaimed in 1792.
Many scholars dismiss Nostradamus as a clever guesser. But none have satisfactorily explained how his book describes and names such dictators as Napoleon, Franco and Hitler.
He calls Napoleon ‘Napolon Roy’ or King Napoleon – ‘an emperor born near Italy’ who would rise from the ranks of common soldiers to build an empire.
He foretells that a man he names ‘Hister’ will unleash a war of conquest on Europe.
Early printed versions of Centuries have been stored for hundreds of years in libraries worldwide. According to the British historian James Laver they offer persuasive and uncorrupted evidence that Michel de Notredame was able to foresee certain future events. In his book Nostradamus Laver suggests we try to discover what Time is before we talk about the ‘impossibility’ of prediction. He writes:
When we travel in a train it seems that the houses and the fields fly past us. But it is we who move.
Do we travel through time in like fashion – future time being merely the country we have not yet reached, with all its hills reared, its valleys carved and its cities established?’
Subway Doom Foretold – in a Sydney Magazine
AN ARTICLE published in the Sydney Morning Herald’s magazine People foreshadowed mass deaths in London’s Underground – 15 weeks before the tragedy occurred.
The story appeared in the magazine’s 10 August 1987 issue. It comprised an interview with astrologer Dennis Elwell under the heading I TOLD YOU SO: AGAIN.
The Australian magazine article which foretold a deadly fire in London’s Underground – 15 weeks before it happened.
Ironically Elwell’s warning appeared as part of an interview in which he recalled his unsuccessful attempts to avert an earlier tragedy – the sinking of the ferry Herald of Free Enterprise, which drowned more than 200 passengers and crew. The 57-year- old described how the ferry’s owners had scorned his letter detailing the forthcoming horror at sea.
But mere days after they had written back describing his advice as nebulous, the ferry plunged, as predicted, to the ocean floor.
In the magazine interview Elwell said, ‘It was crystal-clear there was going to be a great calamity. It was a disastrous sky stemming from an eclipse of the sun in March – identical to the one in 1912 when the Titanic sank. Since the ferry capsized there have been other disasters and near-disasters. It’s part of the cluster syndrome. Astrologically echoes of the ferry disaster will be ringing around for months to come.
‘And I’m very worried about another bad eclipse of the sun in September, which involves a conjunction of Mercury, Pluto and Uranus. Mercury has to do with rail or road travel, Pluto with things underground, and Uranus means a sudden, nasty surprise. It could add up to a disaster involving underground travel – possibly an underground subway system tunnel or road. Astrologically there’s a very strong premonition of an accident.’
On 19 November 1987 the crowded wooden escalator leading to London’s Piccadilly line exploded into flames. The stairway bore its cargo of screaming train travellers down into a nightmare of fire and choking smoke. The tile-melting inferno killed 30 commuters and injured 70 more as they tried to flee the blazing Kings Cross station.
Astrology may be no more than an ancient superstition. But it’s an existential fact that its practitioners have placed numerous accurate predictions on the public record. One astrological columnist, writing in an Egyptian newspaper, famously foresaw the explosion of space shuttle Columbia three weeks before the disaster occurred.
Astrologers also predicted, in print, the assassinations of Indira Gandhi and John F. Kennedy.
It can be rigorously argued, however, that the stars’ positions played no role in forecasting these events – and that the astrologers’ ‘prophecies’ were entirely attributable to precognition.
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Enigma of the Vanishing Heiress
In her heyday she had been regarded as one of Australia’s luckiest young women: rich enough to employ a retinue of servants, to preside over lavish banquets and to spend much of her time holidaying in France and rural Italy. Over the years, however, her fortunes began almost imperceptibly to change, until toward the end she was ragged and half-starved – her family’s once-splendid mansion a rat-plagued ruin. In 1952, when she disappeared, hundreds of men scoured swamp and bush for days without result. Police were convinced she had been murdered. But how, why, and by whom would remain unknown...
PETER CLEMENT – GAUNT, SKINNY AND PALE – was rich beyond the fantasies of most Australians. A penniless labourer when he had migrated to Victoria from Perthshire, Scotland, he now owned a large portfolio of rural properties and was the principal shareholder in two booming goldmines.
Wealth, in the form of fine clothes, servants and ostentatious houses, belied his grim beginnings. But when friends and business associates looked into his sad, sunken eyes they saw, always, the lingering shadow of poverty and privation: a shadow he would carry to his grave.
While living at their vast grazing property near Sale, Clement and his wife Jane produced six children-. Margaret, Jean, Flora, Anna, Peter and William. Clement was determined that his offspring would enjoy lives diametrically different from his own: exclusive education, travel, sound marriages – and the comfort, respect and influence which, in his view, only inherited assets could bring. In the case of four of the Clement children, the plan succeeded in varying degrees.
But for Margaret and Jean, money and idleness would prove to be a slow, subtle poison. By failing to look beyond their cocoon of privilege, and leaving the management of the
ir property and financial affairs to others, they eventually lost everything – including the men who had hoped to marry them, their independence and ultimately their lives.
SHORTLY BEFORE HIS 59TH BIRTHDAY Peter Clement died of heart failure. At the funeral numerous Gippsland farmers and partners in business offered eulogies recalling his kindness and steady reliable nature. Margaret, 10 at the time, was the sibling most enduringly affected by her father’s death. Throughout her years as a student at the exclusive Methodist Ladies’ College in Melbourne, teachers described her as being ‘sad’ and withdrawn.
When Margaret’s and Jean’s schooldays were over, Mrs Clement decided that a voyage around the world would be a desirable way of rounding off their education. She was right. The young women were transformed by the journey. Wherever they travelled – Paris, Rome, Edinburgh, Moscow – they were treated as though they were members of Antipodean royalty: hardly surprising, considering their impeccable manners and diction, combined with an elegant and ever-expanding wardrobe.
This was the first of many trips, during which the sisters were presented at the British court and received numerous marriage proposals. But neither young woman was interested in domesticity. As Margaret put it, ‘There’ll be plenty of time for husbands later on.’ While their siblings courted and became engaged, Jean and Margaret were experiencing the pleasures of spending. On every visit to Europe they bought so many paintings, sculptures, hangings and antique tables and chairs that the booty threatened to burst the bounds of the family’s luxurious Prospect Station homestead.
Plainly, it was time to buy a bigger house. The sisters’ attention turned to an 18-room mansion recently built on a neighbouring property, Tullaree. They convinced their mother that the family should buy it – thus sealing their fate.
Charles Widdis, an entrepreneurial farmer, had decided to build Tullaree near the Tarwin river, intending it to serve as the homestead for a new grazing property. His first task was to clear the land. Aided by several dozen men wielding axes and saws he efficiently destroyed hundreds of acres of immemorial scrub and ti-tree. It was an ecological error for which, in future years, Margaret and Jean Clement would pay dearly.
Widdis erected his mansion using bricks fashioned from the rich mud of the river plain. He was experienced enough to realise that with all its natural vegetation removed the property would be vulnerable to flooding in bad weather. He addressed this small problem in two principal ways:
First, he built his magnificent house on a steep rise which (theoretically) would stand well above anything a swollen river might produce.
Second, he designed and installed an elaborate drainage system which would quickly carry excess water away – not only from the homestead itself, but from the vast sweep of surrounding paddocks in which Tullaree’s stock would eventually graze.
Widdis had learned a lesson from nearby properties on which cattle often became bogged in soggy soil that was no longer bound together by tree roots. Tullaree, with its ingenious array of pipes and emergency sluices would, he believed, experience no such problem.
Peter Clement Junior bought the 1000 hectare property on his family’s behalf- stocking its now verdant paddocks with pedigree cattle, prize sheep and rams. He appointed a manager and a team of experienced farmworkers, undertaking to ‘keep an eye’ on Tullaree whenever his business in the city allowed. Jane Clement and her six children became tenants in common, although it was agreed that Jean and Margaret would be the ones actually living there. The other siblings were happy enough to share the farm’s profits, but were too busy with their marriages and the management of their own finances to take any practical interest in running a cattle station.
Jane and Margaret shared their siblings’ general sense of detachment. Although they had grown up on farms and were accomplished horsewomen they had been conditioned since childhood to accept that the tedious business of repairing fences, maintaining buildings and equipment, and feeding and breeding stock was best left to hirelings.
The young women trusted their farmworkers completely. Of far greater interest to them was the appointment of domestic and grounds staff. They were meticulous in interviewing and selecting the best candidates they could find, from maids and manservants to cooks, gardeners, a carriage-driver, a butler and a groom.
Jean and Margaret arrived at Tullaree by horsedrawn carriage on a flawless summer morning in 1907. They were delighted, although not surprised, to see that everything had been prepared for them. The broad landscaped gardens were dotted with white statuary and splashing fountains. The servants awaited them at the imposing front entrance, curtseying and smiling. As they stepped into the mansion’s cool interior, onto deep newly laid carpets they saw that their instructions had been scrupulously obeyed and that all their treasures from around the world had been arranged to greet them. The heavy brocades and the huge paintings in their dark scrolled frames had been hung. Tall Dutch mirrors reflected the riotous colours of the English garden. Deep Chinese bowls brimmed with freshly cut flowers. Chandeliers, laden with hundreds of wax candles, glittered in the harsh light from outside.
From the beginning Margaret and Jean adored their new home – and within a few weeks had given the first of a long series of summer garden parties for wealthy country neighbours and friends from Melbourne. Banquets and dances, with invitation lists of up to 150 guests, were to follow. Peter Clement, who, as a co-owner, liked to check the household books occasionally, was disturbed by the lavishness of his sisters’ expenditure. But they tersely reminded him (in the manner that siblings have) that it was their own money they were spending: their share of the income derived from Tullaree. And Tullaree, thanks to its profit from stud services and stock sales, was booming.
In 1914, when the Great War began, Peter Clement Junior was among the first young Australians to enlist. Two years later he was shipped home a broken man, savagely wounded and shellshocked.
He never visited Tullaree or checked its financial health again. And his brother William was too engrossed in his own business endeavours to take on the job. All decisions reverted, by default, to the sisters.
The war over, the festivities at Tullaree resumed – as grand and as spendthrift as ever. Among socially ambitious Victorians, an invitation from Margaret and Jean Clement was regarded as a coup. Often the mansion’s grounds would be packed with gleaming motorcars, the chauffeurs slumped outside, puffing on roll-your-owns and chatting while their employers dazzled each other inside. Later, when the limousines were ready to leave, some drivers would find that their rear wheels had sunk into the lawn, whereupon the tyres spun without traction, indiscriminately spraying mud on guests and other chauffeurs. Servants and farm labourers would strategically place planks in the muddy ruts, usually solving the problem, for the moment.
The sisters continued to enjoy themselves and to bring pleasure to their financial peers. But beneath the glitter an element of regret had begun to intrude into their once-carefree lives. Many of the men who had so tirelessly wooed them were gone – either lost in the war or married, on the rebound, to other women. These men were missed, more than they would ever know. Although they confided the fact to few, Jean and Margaret had begun to regret the playful scorn with which they had dismissed their suitors – and to envy the other Clement sisters, settled with husbands and children into the cosy certitudes of marriage.
Margaret and Jean loved babies too – and had always taken it for granted that they would become mothers one day. But now, for the first time, they began to wonder whether they had left their run too late.
And there were other concerns. The war had changed workers’ attitudes. Margaret and Jean were distressed to find that recently appointed household staff and farm employees were quite unmistakably showing less respect than had been normal in the past. Worse, the new intakes of hirelings were not nearly so skilled and meticulous as their predecessors – and, with rural labour becoming increasingly unionised, they were demanding more money. It was all a great wo
rry to the sisters, who found themselves increasingly required to perform the role of employers, when they would much rather have devoted their time, as in the past, to fashion, banquets and travel.
Even more worryingly, they were being swindled. They might never have noticed it was happening had a neighbouring farmer not alerted them. A dishonest employee had for several months been selling off prize breeding cattle, replacing them with cheap animals and pocketing the difference. The man decamped with a large sum of money, creating a serious dent in Tullaree’s finances.
Suddenly everything seemed to be going wrong. The sisters’ extravagant parties were attracting as many elite, chauffeur-ferried friends and acquaintances as ever – but the grand gardens that greeted them seemed slightly wilder and less scrupulously manicured than before. Koalas snoozed as always in the trees and peacocks still strutted on the sweeping lawns, which were as green as ever – if not more so. But the grass nowadays had an unpleasant habit of squelching beneath visitors’ feet.
Margaret knew what the problem was. The town vet – of all people – had warned her during a visit. The drainage channels, so punctiliously installed by Charlie Widdis, had silted up during the long period of wartime neglect, and were becoming increasingly blocked whenever it rained. Storm water, which should smoothly have drained into the river, was stagnating under the mansion and its gardens, and was forming vast water tables beneath the grazing pastures beyond. Margaret had ordered the property’s manager, in the strongest terms, to set the problem right – and he and his workers had made several attempts to do so. But despite all efforts to clear them the drains continued to clog.
Margaret and Jean knew (or, at least, they were advised) that they really must engage a soil engineer to perform the repairs ‘professionally’. But they procrastinated. There were too many new season’s dresses to buy and foreign holidays to enjoy and additional trophies to ship back home. They had a place in society to preserve.
