The Family cult, led by Anne Hamilton-Byrne (centre), allegedly subjected children to terrible abuse. Two sites connected to the cult, including Hamilton-Byrne’s former Olinda home (right), have just sold. Pictures: Alex Coppel/Supplied.
A host of Victorian properties connected to some of the state’s most notorious cults have been sold in a surprise sales rush for the homes of ex-sects.
A survivor of one of the cults has revealed his experiences at two of the addresses.
Two of the sites were connected to The Family, led by ex-yoga teacher Anne Hamilton-Byrne who claimed to be a reincarnation of Jesus and taught her followers they would lead a new world order after a nuclear holocaust.
RELATED: Inside Aus’s most secretive religious regimes
‘Extremist’ UFO cult’s $9m selloff
‘Super creepy’: Mysterious ‘haunted house’ sold to new family for $3.1 million at auction
Also known as the Great White Brotherhood and the Santiniketan Park Association, the sect became infamous for claims it abused children through beatings and starvation, forced them to take drugs and dyed their hair white-blonde in the 1970s and 1980s.
The group’s former Ferny Creek worship hall – where the late Hamilton-Byrne was reported to have kept several cats she believed to be reincarnations of humans – has a new owner after fetching $1.5m earlier in November.
An Olinda homestead where Hamilton-Byrne once lived has also sold.
The chapel built during the 1970s by The Family cult members on Belgrave-Ferny Creek Rd, Ferny Creek, has sold for $1.5m.
Children walk with The Family cult leader Anne Hamilton-Byrne on the banks of Lake Eildon, Victoria, where the religious group had a lodge.
Hamilton-Byrne was thought to have kept several cats, whom she believed to be reincarnations of humans, at the Ferny Creek property’s rear.
They are not the only cult-related Victorian sites to test the market, with the one-time Bright home of The Church of the Firstborn offloaded by the current owner as well.
When it comes to The Family, some children raised at a cult property in Lake Eildon were illegally adopted or willingly surrendered by their mothers.
After a 1987 police raid removed the children from the premises, Hamilton-Byrne and her husband Bill fled to the US before being arrested in 1993.
They were never charged with child abuse but were fined $5000 after pleading guilty in court to making a false declaration.
However, a group of the grown-up children sued Hamilton-Byrne and a charity run by cult members for alleged “cruel and inhumane treatment” before being offered a $600,000 settlement in 2020.
Hamilton-Byrne once lived at this house on Mt Dandenong Tourist Rd, Olinda, which has just sold. It previously changed hands in 2021.
One of the framed photos Hamilton-Byrne had on display in her Melbourne house when the Herald Sun visited in 2009. Picture: Alex Coppel.
Ownership of the Belgrave-Ferny Creek Rd, Ferny Creek, chapel site was transferred to the Tibetan Cultural Society five years ago.
The religious group sold it this month although Fletchers Yarra Ranges’ director Scott Allison declined to comment.
Separately, a nine-bedroom house on Mt Dandenong Tourist Road, Olinda, where Hamilton-Byrne formerly lived has changed hands for $1.47m.
Ranges First National Real Estate’s Mick Dolphin and Anthony Iorlano had the listing.
A caveat, not connected to its last owner, was placed upon the home during the legal proceedings brought about by the cult’s survivors.
A survivor of The Family cult, Ben Shenton, has written a book titled Life Behind the Wire about his childhood in the sect and the dangers of cult-like thinking.
A young Ben Shenton in the cult, after having his hair bleached blonde.
One of the children raised in the cult, Ben Shenton, was aged 15 when police raided the Lake Eildon property.
He has written a book titled Life Behind the Wire detailing his childhood as one of the blonde-haired children in cult photos and the dangers of cult-like thinking.
The father-of-two is also chief executive of the Rescue The Family group and website aimed at raising awareness of such issues.
Mr Shenton said he first met his mother, a cult member, when he visited the Hamilton-Byrne’s Olinda property as a boy.
At the time, he didn’t know she was his parent and simply referred to her as “aunty”.
He and the other children enjoyed visiting the Olinda house as a break from the Lake Eildon premises which they nicknamed a “concentration camp”.
Hamilton-Byrne on her way to court in the 1990s.
Inside the Ferny Creek hall which was last owned by a Buddhist group.
His mother became involved in the cult after suffering injuries including whiplash during a car accident, plus scoliosis.
Traditional medical treatments of the time did not much help her condition but yoga-related exercises, along with meditation and prayer from Hamilton-Byrne, greatly helped.
“I think she was convinced that Anne was the messiah,” Mr Shenton said.
He recalled Hamilton-Byrne entering the Ferny Creek hall for mediations and services to music composed by Mozart, often with blue or purple lights illuminating an aisle between chairs.
“I think there’s an iconic picture that shows an altar set up with a cross and candles,” Mr Shenton said.
Me Shenton says the Olinda homestead where Hamilton-Byrne previously lived now looks quite different to when he visited as a child, after the latest owner renovated it.
Hamilton-Byrne spent her later years living in Melbourne before moving into a nursing home, where she died at the age of 97 in 2019. Picture: Alex Coppel.
He said a former master of Melbourne University’s Queen’s College, physicist Dr Raynor Johnson, lent the cult credibility after joining it himself upon the university forcibly retiring him.
A copy of his diary, seen by the Herald Sun in 2014, showed that Dr Raynor believed Hamilton-Bryne was a reincarnation of Christ.
Mr Shenton said while some reports of The Family’s activities have been slightly sensationalised but not by much.
One of Hamilton-Byrne’s adoptive daughters who trained as a medical doctor after being removed from the cult, the late Dr Sarah Moore, published the book Unseen, Unknown and Unheard about her horrific childhood experiences, in 1995.
“What Sarah put into her book, what we went through was indeed very regimented like yoga and meditation,” Mr Shenton said.
“There was a rule book that Anne kept, and the aunts (as he and the other children called women in the sect) followed, and would ring in and demand nothing short of abuse.”
The former Olinda residence of Hamilton-Byrne, photographed in 2004. Picture: Ian Currie.
Hamilton-Byrne and her husband Bill’s 1993 arrest made the Herald Sun’s front page.
He recalled the youngsters being deprived of meals, put on stringent diets to control their weight and having their heads dunked in water.
“There was dunking in water that happened on two separate occasions, that would be nothing short of PTSD-material – Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome,” Mr Shenton said.
“It was horrendous watching Sarah being physically beaten and another girl after that, as well as on the direction of Anne or directly by Bill himself at different points.”
Hamilton-Byrne would also intervene to break up friendships the children formed.
“She directed your life, and that was to set you up so that she’d become your guru, that you’re aware that she was the one in control,” he said.
“And she perfected that and lied to people, controlled them so you never knew what was true what was not.”
The Olinda house was once an eatery where Devonshire teas were served to the public, in addition to being Hamilton-Byrne’s home.
Adventure motorcycle rider and instructor Miles Davis at his Bright property, where The Church of the Firstborn was once based. The site has sold and is due to settle soon. Picture: Simon Dallinger.
Mr Shenton said he was fortunate to get out of the cult as a teenager.
“I was able to spend a couple of years in school, and then fortunate to become a born-again Christian,” he noted.
“To just become part of a just a normal, standard church that functioned normally, a group of people that treated me as normal, not as anything special, and that helped me to pick up social skills.”
Although Mr Shenton initially struggled after leaving the cult as a young man, he is now happily married with two children, and has enjoyed a long career at IBM and BHP.
An aerial view of the Back Porepunkah Rd, Bright, property where The Church of the Firstborn cult operated in the 1980s.
Roughly a decade ago, Ranges First National’s Grant Skipsey listed a handful of neglected Ferny Creek homes and vacant blocks on behalf of owners linked to The Family.
Most of them were purchased by buyers planning to renovate and either live there or sell on.
Mr Skipsey said the sellers had been happy for him to disclose the sites’ links to the cult which had by then evolved into what they described as a “quiet, elderly meditation group”.
Although he had doubts about taking on the listings at first, he eventually decided to do so.
“I thought, ‘Well, the sooner I can help get these to non-Family property and into private ownership and move onto being something normal, that would be good,” Mr Skipsey said.
Nowadays, Ferny Creek is a popular suburb for tree-changers, young first-home buyer couples and upsizing families, he added.
Mr Davis inside the former church, back in 2021. Picture: Simon Dallinger.
Further away from Melbourne, the one-time Bright base of an ex-cult named The Church of the Firstborn is due to settle later this year after selling off-market.
The 2.162ha property features a glass-pyramid-topped chapel that was known as Christ’s Place of Restoration in the eighties.
Sect founder Ron Clarke (no relation to the athlete) claimed he was the sole person who could welcome Jesus back to Earth.
Adventure motorcycle rider and instructor Miles Davis (no relation to the musician) bought the property in an abandoned state, in 2017.
Dickens Real Estate sales manager Gerard Gray said the sold price was undisclosed but that the site had attracted interest from Melbourne-, Sydney- and Canberra-based buyers.
It was initially listed with a $3m price tag, four years ago.
“Developing it further into more accommodation was the most common buyer inquiry,” Mr Gray said.
Sign up to the Herald Sun Weekly Real Estate Update. Click here to get the latest Victorian property market news delivered direct to your inbox.
MORE: The Big Man’s World’s Arman Liew lists luxe Prahran home
AFL star Charlie Curnow lists Torquay weekender after Sydney Swans trade
Victorian government’s radical new plan to stamp out underquoting explained
English (US) · 