Who are the Shepherd's Heart and what do they believe?

Newcomers to this piece may wish to note my December 2019 update on this story, appearing at the bottom of part 2 of the story here.

If you have had a harmful encounter with this group or another like it, please contact the author, the Australian False Memory Association (AFMA), or the Cult Information and Family Support network (CIFS).

When reading, please keep in mind that these are the words and beliefs of John Darnell and the Shepherd's Heart Church. The sources quoted are the Darnell's own writings, videos and radio interviews.

Those who are here to find the video of the TV exposés of the Shepherd's Heart and of the Blue Mountains cult who took my wife should scroll to the bottom of this piece.

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Today, I'm putting on my hat of citizen-journalist.

John Darnell and his wife Glenys run a church in Canberra called the Shepherd's Heart. Formerly it was called The Fold Christian Fellowship. Because I have no aversion to calling things by their right name, I say they are dangerous lunatics. I know this because they provided a treatment program to my beloved wife which contributed to the ruination of her life.
I am writing, obviously, to warn others.

The Darnells believe they have a special calling. For years, they have received people (disproportionately, women) whose initial presentation may only be of emotional distress. Some may have diagnosed or undiagnosed mental illnesses. They believe that their calling is to assist their subjects recall, acknowledge and then heal from trauma, even abuse, experienced earlier in life. Critically, the subject may be entirely unaware they had endured this abuse and trauma until the Darnell's techniques produce distressing recollections that then have to be interpreted and processed.
The problem is that these recollections are false.
The implications are devastating, both for the subjects of such counselling and for their families.

This is a well known phenomenon called False Memory Syndrome. It is otherwise known as Repressed Memory Therapy (RMT). It has been widely reported, even in the Australian media, and the archetype case, that of a woman named "Sybil", has been comprehensively discredited and debunked.

In the more bizarre and extreme cases of RMT are interwoven fantastic claims that the abuse that subjects have endured (and note, never remembered, and had no prior awareness of) was of a sinister occult character, involving Satanic rituals, sacrifice, cannibalism and quite spectacular end-time conspiracies. This related phenomenon claims there is an concealed epidemic of Ritual Satanic Abuse (RSA) in the world.

Enter John Darnell, and his tinfoil hat-wearing ilk.

.       John Darnell, radio interview, 18th August 2011.

Belief in Ritual Satanic Abuse has been around for years, confined to the most disreputable and wild-eyed fringe of the Christian church. Despite this dubious benchmark, John and Glenys Darnell have brought fear-mongering about RSA to a histrionic and dangerous pitch never seen before in Australia. There is, according to Darnell, a Satanic conspiracy that has pervaded our mainstream churches and civil governments alike, to the highest levels, to cover up the wholesale kidnapping, sacrifice and cannibalism of thousands of people.

There are, apparently, spiritual beings named Nephilim, who are demons, walking the earth in human guise and mating with women in unwilling trysts. There is a secret breeding program, aimed at producing half-demon "super soldiers" implanted with some kind of ingrained subconscious programming, ready to be activated at the advent of the apocalypse. They look human. You might be one of them, without knowing. Some women are kidnapped by demonically piloted UFOs, taken to a secret underground base near Mt Hermon in Israel, and have their half-demon foetuses removed. Some people with a strong demonic bloodline occupy the highest stations of power in the world (for example, the Royal family). Lastly, to cap it all off, the post WW2 Satanic strategy springs, in large part, to the work of Dr Mengele and other occult-crazed Nazi scientists imported to the West in Operation Paperclip at the close of the war.

John and Glenys Darnell believe all this, and they preach it with a straight face. Darnell has written a book on the subject, and uses it as an underpinning of his counselling, therapy, treatment; call it what you will, inflicting it upon people who are in reality, desperately in need of proper psychiatric care. The Darnells have been the subject of Government investigation, yet insufficient censure by the Health Services Commissioner in the Australian Capital Territory. They have been forced to modify the presentation of their material, but their core beliefs remain unfettered. As Darnell explained to host Richard Grund in an extended radio interview on 17-10-10, "So what? I'm prepared to go to gaol. I'm prepared to die, to help these people... They may sue me. I don't care!" Well they may, John. And well they ought to. This is why I call Darnell dangerous. He has a holy calling. Mere government censure is irrelevant, and probably demonic as well. Where there is no accountability, save to God, evil is always sure to flourish.

And what impact is Darnell having? In August 2011, Darnell was asked how many people are presently under his "ministry". His cagey answer was "a couple of dozen", adding he "doesn't keep notes". The ministry, however, has run for over a decade, and "hundreds" have been "touched". Keep that in mind.

However, let's back up a little and unpack some terms first. What are the Darnells purporting to treat? Dissociation is a medical word, a psychiatric concept, to describe a certain lack of integration in an individual's conscious experience. The popular conception is the person with Multiple Personality Syndrome (MPS), who has allegedly internally partitioned their mind to wall off an unpleasant experience, and who has created "alters" who present by turns. These personalities may possess separate, even contradictory and mutually exclusive, memories, intentions and traits. Think United States of Tara for a glib and pablum rendition.

The mental-health profession now deprecates the term "multiple personalities" in favour of a new term, Dissociative Identity Disorder (D.I.D). It is a controversial and hugely disputed diagnosis, attracting advocates and detractors of uncommon passion. The Darnells possess no qualification to make or treat such a diagnosis. But for over a decade, the Darnells were happy to promote via manuals, workbooks, seminars and videos, and in their one-on-one counselling, a program which explicitly used medical and psychological terminology to describe the "formation of memory", and which, superficially at least, sounded more clinical than pastoral.

Glenys Darnell uses pseudo-medical and pseudo-psychological terminology (here, talking about role of the pre-frontal cortex in the formation of memory) in a video now withdrawn from use after an official complaint was upheld.

John and Glenys Darnell only recently placed a mild caveat about their lack of qualification to treat a condition whose name only appears in the medical literature, after they became the subject of official complaint. Their website has only recently acquired this rider: Disclaimer. Where medical or psychological issues are discussed they are from a layman's understanding and not intended to be a substitute for qualified professional opinion. If such opinion is required please consult with suitably qualified personnel.

...and they have now substituted the term "Dissociation" with "Spiritual Dissociation", which is as weaselly as it's possible to be when you know you're being subjected to uncomfortable scrutiny. "No!", they say, and probably with some panic; "This isn't... medical, this is a ministry to the body of Christ."
St Paul's conversion could not have been more convenient.

Because the proof that this has been portrayed by the Darnells as more than a "ministry" comes from a letter from a Sydney-based psychologist, Sue Bartho, who wrote that my wife "is undertaking a D.I.D treatment program from the Shepherd’s Heart centre in Canberra, which is being administered by a team of women. My role has been to monitor this treatment during the integration phase."
So, a Psychologist was prepared to endorse the Shepherd's Heart program (some materials from which are available at this archived site, predating the incriminating material being removed from their current website) as being fitting, perhaps even clinically endorsed in some way. I have a letter from a general practitioner who has fallen for the same ruse and uses similar terms.

Was Sue Bartho duped by the Shepherd's Heart into thinking that this therapy was clinically endorsed, or was she an enthusiastic advocate for a therapy which included a belief in Nazi-demon-UFO-impregnation and exorcism? Criminy, the preceding sentence sounds like a Weekly World News headline. At the least, did she give enough scrutiny to the "treatment" she was "monitoring"? All the warning signs were present, and Sue Bartho was warned repeatedly of the misdirection of my wife's psychological care and chose to do nothing. Thus, sadly, I must provisionally conclude the latter. Bartho was invited to repudiate the beliefs and therapy practices she has confirmed she was "monitoring", and she declined to do so. This puts her self professed claim to being "a spiritually sensitive therapist, who believes that we benefit from being connected, not only with ourselves and our loved ones, but also with God" on doubtful footing, considering this very therapy has robbed at least one women of her family. (This blog, as always, stands ready to publish a corrective, should it arrive.)

.            What passes for beliefs appropriate to the treatment .           of Dissociation, according to Psychologist Sue Bartho.

The "team of women" mentioned as providing this treatment are Virginnia Donges, Jenny Buckingham-Jones and Annette Wotherspoon, who travelled from a cult group in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney to confer with John Darnell and attend a seminar intended to teach the treatment program. They are, in many respects, fellow travellers with John Darnell, and share a great deal of common belief, especially in the area of "spiritual warfare".  Their role has been the subject of two television exposés, and a speech at Parliament House in Canberra. They will be the subject of a separate article, in time, but for now the videos of the TV exposés and speeches are placed at the end of this article.

John and Glenys Darnell demonstrate a feature of their "repressed memory therapy", the regression to infantile states where "trauma" can be relived. In this role-play, Glenys pretends to be a toddler, while John Darnell elicits the bad memories, without skepticism. (The Latin word "elicit" means "drawn out by trickery or magic", which seems apposite). The source video (since removed from the S.H site) is disturbing.

Imagine how the life of a mentally vulnerable person would be devastated if their therapy was perverted  by unqualified people causing them to believe in abuse that never happened? Which causes a person to make false accusations against family members? Which separates them from the very family who should be there to support them through their illness? Imagine therapy predicated on a belief that a sufferer has been kidnapped by demonically piloted UFOs, or has been impregnated by demons, or which suggests the victim may possibly be less than human because they have a "demonic bloodline"?

Darnell reported once that a subject he was counselling said "if you can't help me, I'll kill myself". I'm hardly surprised. My wife was assessed by Darnell, then treated extensively from his workbooks by others. She subsequently wrote a suicide note.

Will someone come to catastrophic harm as a result of these beliefs?
Yes. I believe it is only a matter of time.

I end this piece with a selection of quotes from John Darnell's own mouth, largely given from an August 2011 radio interview. Consider the impact of the following beliefs on people who need professional psychiatric care and who instead receive... this, as any kind of substitute.

About the nature of Dissociation:

"The main person doesn't know about the abuse. And the Satanic groups know this and use it to split off hundreds or thousands of parts, who they train to do cult work. You can meet them, and they will not have a clue of what's going on in their life... These people are planted in churches, they're planted in society, in government. The Lord told me last year, 'John, start speaking out'."

Q: How many alters do you see in victims? 4? 5? 10? 20?

Darnell: "You can go from the dozens, where there's sexual abuse; not a lot of occult. If it's a highly sophisticated [cult], and most of the ones we deal with are, it can go to the tens of thousands... It's highly technological. They have machinery and equipment to cause these people to split over and over. What my book talks about is, there's thousands of personalities, but they're in the second heaven. All those who have recovered from this will have some recollection of system, which is a construction in the second heaven. You can best think of the system as a small, city-sized prison [for split off personalities]"

About Nazis, the Fourth Reich, and the New World Order:
Darnell is asked "Is it true that this D.I.D and S.R.A really started at the end of World War II, and that this is based on the work of Dr Mengele?",
Darnell: "Absolutely, that's a common thread. But we can't call it 'Dissociative Identity Disorder' because we got in trouble from the Health Services Commissioner, so we don't. I don't treat Dissociation. I don't treat Dissociative Identity Disorder. I minister to a spiritual phenomenon."

John Darnell: "I don't treat Dissociation. I don't treat Dissociative Identity Disorder..." Right: Cover of John Darnell's workbook, "Ministering to Dissociation: Course Manual"
John Darnell: "...I minister to a spiritual phenomenon."  Right: Part of the table of contents of John Darnell's purely "spiritual" course manual on Dissociation.

Above: The warning Darnell placed on his therapy manual.

This material has now been banned from use by the

Health Services Commissioner of the ACT after an investigation.

John Darnell: "Go onto the Internet, look up Operation Paperclip; it's well documented. Nazi scientists were taken into the west, but those scientists were heavily involved in the occult; they were involved in the research to re-create the 'sons of God', which were the Nephilim. American governments, Australian governments. I believe they are in high positions in every western government. There are people in government departments, who do not know that they have 'multiples'. There are Nephilim planted in governments. Everyone wants to see people with horns.. but these people are in suits. They are in government departments. The vast majority don't even know what's going on in their lives... These people will be switched to their New World Order personalities when it happens. The personalities who know nothing about this will be pushed out of the way, and the ones who do know will come foreword, and you'll have an already functioning government. I believe it is already in place... It's the Fourth Reich. Based on the evidence I have, the people I've ministered to... Every single person I minister to, sooner or later, you come across the Fourth Reich. They're trained, they have the ideology."

"(The Demonic Super Soldiers) that I have seen all have personalities, dissociated parts, who are trained to execute; to go on the rampage... They are what we see in ministry over and over again." (the implication here is all spree killings we see, such as those of Anders Breivik or Jared Loughner, are test runs performed by satanic operatives, and which will be repeated "x1000" at the appointed time).

About UFOs
"Fallen Sons of God have been materialising in physical form, doing things, usually sexual, with victims of Ritual Satanic Abuse. You discover there have been pregnancies... I did not want to believe it! But we discovered there are births that have happened, and that they weren't human... We've chosen to go with what God has shown us; the jigsaw pieces start to fit together. We became aware of a breeding program. A UFO. In the Second Heaven. A living creature... I can promise you that this stuff has been confirmed again and again and again. Oh, I believe there is hardware, there's all sorts of stuff that's under wraps, but I'm dealing with spiritual stuff... People are being abducted, people are being taken. There is a breeding program going on... In working with Satanic Ritual Abuse survivors, and what is happening out there with UFOs, and UFO abductions, they are one and the same thing!"

About the Demonic Breeding Program:
"What I have discovered is that every high ranking, international satanic group, they are all involved in the breeding program. All the women get used. If you're really working in the Holy Spirit, if you're really being guided by the Lord, sooner or later you'll encounter the hybrid breeding program. The eggs get harvested; their womb's get used."

"All the girls get used for breeding. I hear story after story about rapes by fallen angels, or by Nephilim hybrids. I hear of abductions. I understand that a lot of this happens underground, in huge places, under the earth... They are here. They look human. They are positioned."

"[Victims] have Dissociated parts, that don't know they are Nephilim. They don't know! They haven't got a clue as to what they are!" (consider the injury to a mentally ill person when they are counselled that they might be a fragment of a demon!)

"Until the last couple of years we were as much uninformed about the UFO phenomena and abductions as the average citizen. We had encountered the reality of horrific creatures materializing in satanic rituals, and, raping girls who we were later helping. It just never occurred to us that a conception may have taken place as a result of the rape. We certainly did not make any connection with the UFO phenomena. We had our first experience with a girl as she relived the birth of what seemed to be a non-human baby, but even then we did not make any connection. Sometimes the Lord has to keep our noses pressed against the window until we see what it is He is trying to show us. Then, in ministry, the Lord led us to renounce involvement with the US military, and her being twisted with "sons of God‟. We saw deliverance and freedom as we did so, but had no understanding of what was beginning to be revealed."
(This extract from John Darnell's latest book "Satanic Strategies")

...And generally:

"I can't prove any of this, but I believe there is cannibalism, there is eating of flesh, drinking of blood... You tell me there are one hundred thousand people who go missing every year in the United States? Let's think about that. That's 2000 a week. Why aren't bodies found?

Listener Question: "My question for John is: I heard an interview stating that the British Royal Family turn into reptiles. There are deep occultic ties in the Royal bloodline. What is your stance? Do people actually turn into reptiles?"
John Darnell: "The Lord has had my nose against this particular glass for three months now (laughs). All the evidence that I have. All the stories, all the tales are that this is real. The things I've been learning about is that they probably have a high concentration of Nephilim blood, or fallen angel blood. Sometimes, with the genetic stuff that they do in the world today, there may be other species spliced in, which facilitates what goes on. But do I believe it happens? Yes! Can I say it happens to the Royal family? No, but I believe so... There is an International, world-level conspiracy where families, politicians, bankers, the entertainment industry are in collusion with fallen angels in exchange for power and money, and it's gone on for a long time, but it's exploded since World War 2. But do I believe that people shape-shift into other creatures? Unfortunately, I do. I've been dealing with people who have actually done it. We've seen it happen. It is very, very deep level, occult power."

Postscript:
In a pluralist, democratic society, we fiercely defend the rights of individuals to believe whatever they wish, and to follow their lights. To the frustration of some, this includes the right to believe things that are absurd, embarrassing, palpably wrong, incompatible with any society founded on the principles of the Enlightenment, and yes, even beliefs that are personally harmful.

However, society also draws lines. We properly say that a minor cannot give informed consent to a sexual relationship with an adult. We say that a mentally ill person should be protected from the aberrations of their own mind that might bring them to self-harm. We award the custody of children, even occasionally going against the grain of parentage, on the basis that some choices place children at risk.

We hope that these lines society draws, are reflected in our laws. If you inflict a sexual abuse, or commit a financial fraud, or attack a person in an act of battery, there are laws standing by to bring you to book. If, however, a person is subjected to a gross act of psychological abuse; an abuse that takes a vulnerable person and weans them off the attachments of their family by convincing them that their family are Satanists, or misdirects the course of their medical care, or causes a person to adopt beliefs that rob them of their dignity, their career, even their name... well, I'm sorry to tell you that in Australia there is no law against such a crime (and make no mistake, it is a crime).

My quest over the last three years has been to meticulously collate evidence that demonstrates that this deficiency in the law is overdue for amendment, and to prosecute that argument to a conclusion that makes society safer from such quacks, prophets and deluded fools. So profound and distressing are the changes in my wife that many of us despair of regaining the smiling and vivacious woman she once was, although we always pray for just such an event.

But if writing, and warning others prevents a single family from having to fall prey to evil such as this (and I use that word entirely deliberately), then my time, and any risk entailed in the exercise, will be well spent.

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VIDEOS:

The Shepherd's Heart, and the Blue Mountains cult that took my wife have been the subject of two television exposés in late 2011 (with many thanks to "A Current Affair" journalist Nick Coe for his interest and professionalism). I also spoke at the CIFS international conference on cults at Australia's Parliament House in November 2011, a conference I am pleased to report was co-sponsored and hosted by Liberal Senator Sue Boyce, and which was attended by a number of Federal MPs, foreign dignitaries, and Australian of the Year (and leading advocate for mental health issues), Professor Patrick McGorry.

My suggestion is you watch these videos in the order they are presented here.

Video of second "A Current Affair" piece (17th November 2011):

Video of Parliament House speech (2nd November 2011):

Video of first "A Current Affair" piece (2nd November 2011):

Abandoning the Cubby

Where we love is home;

home that our feet may leave,

but not our hearts.

- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., Homesick in Heaven

I took a forlorn, last look around me from the throne of my childhood.

The huge old tree under which I sat was leaning against the neighbour’s brush fence, as it always had. Suddenly, I had the sense that it was from exhaustion. We won’t play like this again, but it was grand, wasn’t it? It had grown in a curious arch from the ground and curved overhead, the pendulous branches creating a cave-like space larger than a truck, enclosed on three sides, once you included the fence. I had crafted the opening into a door with bales of straw and woven branches. It was a dappled, cosy space, but the day was cold and wet.

I sat on one of the branches inside that formed a natural seat. I had to hunch forward a little more than I used to. It used to be a more comfortable fit. I wondered if it was as much the tree growing, as I.

I smiled as I ran my hand over the marks, in liquid paper, painted on the adjacent branches; crude icons and buttons. Power, I mouthed silently. Shields. Lasers. Scanners.  I surveyed, for the last time, the bridge of my ship; the console of my time machine; the keep of my fort… the last line of my defence against growing up, fallen silent now in valediction.

And there, over in the corner, was the depression where, years before, I had commenced digging a hole which I had announced would be the entrance to a series of underground tunnels, lit and paved, like in Hogan’s Heroes. My grandfather, impressed and indulgent, gave me a shovel and a knowing wink. The hole never got more than 3 feet deep.

How many hours, I wondered, were lost in this space? No, not lost; found. My sister said once that she had spied on me, and wondered why I wasn’t doing anything. “You were just staring into space, for like, hours.”

“Of course,” I replied “but you didn’t see what was going on up here” as I tapped my forehead.

“Well I should know,” my sister, four years younger than I, argued. “We never played my games there.”

“My prerogative. My cubby, my rules.”

“What? Like that time you insisted we had landed on a, a…” she searched for a word,  “a mystery planet that looked just like ours, and we had to go into the house and pretend everyone were aliens?”

I smiled at the recollection. I warmed to the topic.

“I remember that!. And the time after we had just come back from Jenolan caves, and we were in the house and I said we would pretend the cubby was the Skeleton cave and we had to sneak up to it to see the real skeleton, and you were so frightened you wouldn’t go in.”

My sister affected mock bluster. “I was, like, six.”

My reverie was broken by the whine of the removalist van laboring up the driveway. I hated it, with all the lack of ambiguity only a 15 year old can project onto the world. Because it wasn’t fair.

I looked toward the house to see if anyone was emerging to direct the van, past the huge, imperial Jacaranda that dominated the centre of the property. The Jacaranda was losing the last of its autumn leaves, and dripped with the drizzle that had set in.

It matched my mood.

That tree was planted by my great grandfather, and that one by his father, my heart cried. Well, probably. But our property had been in my family since the 1850s and at that moment, every blade of grass was sacred, and its abandonment,  an outrage. My world was upended and ending.

Mum, haggard, had indeed emerged from the house and was futilely gesturing for the driver to drive beside the driveway at the top because the unparalleled comings and leavings had turned the top yard into a sea of mud. Yesterday’s truck had become bogged. Yes, I thought. Our place… she doesn’t want us to leave. She’s hanging on. I felt the weight of history like a physical force. I felt it radiating out of the ground. Not fair.

Mum sighed in frustration.

“You’re not making this any easier,” she had said, months before. We were sitting at our kitchen table. She took my hand in both her own; her sure sign that what she was saying needed to be absorbed. By osmosis, if necessary.

“Your grandparents aren’t well enough to keep up the place any more. Won’t you look forward to them coming and living with us at our place? There’ll be all the building, while we build the granny flat. And then, well, you won’t have to wait to visit; they’ll be right here with us.”

My mouth made shapes while I considered the proposition, like I was turning over a sourgum I couldn’t decide if I liked or hated.

As if. I would be irrational; “No. It’s the family property. No one will care like we do, who grafted which tree, and which gardens the pets are buried in. It’s everything that’s constant in my life, and I don’t want it taken away.”

Mum’s look of sadness was almost enough to tip me over the edge, because she knew I was right. Nevertheless, the pitiless Universe said she was right, too, and I knew it. And the knowing made me just that bit less a child.

I hope, I thought, as I left my cubby behind for the last time, I hope someone finds you. I brightened. Maybe this will will become a special place for someone else. Maybe they will find it and marvel, like ‘The Secret Garden’. I was told that the buyer had a family, but the details were sketchy.

I left behind a part of myself on that day, but I also took the seed of what that space meant. In time, it took root.

I glance out my window. My eight year old son is shouting at the world from the cubby I have built him, defending it against invisible foes. Our property is salted with good climbing trees, many of them scions of the trees of the old place, gifted by my grandparents when the family moved.

Continuity is preserved. The force of history still radiates from my ground, and it is warm.

I smile.

This piece was written for a creative writing unit

I am doing at University. The brief was to write 1000

words about a vivid childhood memory.

In which I muse upon the present felicity of my life

I should like to dilate, for a moment, upon the awesomeness of my life.

Take one day: Today started early, with my son's Soccer game. Man of the match.

Then I gave two well-received performances of a play I'm in with my local dramatic society, The Richmond Players, 'Dial M for Murder'.

Then I retired to the Local for a well earned drink with my friends, some of whom I've known for decades, and some of whom were not my friends until this year.

Then, on the way home, close to midnight, I happened to pass the 'Hawkesbury Relay for Life', happening at the local showground, being a 24-hour walk-a-thon for Cancer research and support. So, on a whim, I did a spontaneous lap, remembering those (too many) in my life who have been taken by Cancer, and made a donation. I arrived home to a warm hearth and my sleeping bairn.

My Son adores me, and I him. I'm half way through my Masters at Uni and I'm loving every minute of it. I own a house. I'm civically engaged. I walk the corridors of power. I work for a parliamentarian. I organise and I influence, in my own modest way. I am heard. Someday, perhaps, I will do more, if I'm good enough.

I have my health, I'm comfortable in my own skin, and I pay my bills well enough to ease small burdens elsewhere.  Throwing a ball with our two dogs at the end of a day, or observing the turn of the seasons, or hearing my boy say "I love you, Dad" carry more moment than the pronouncements of the great, and that is precisely the perspective I ought to have. Those whom I care for are prospering, and so, I prosper too.

I cannot say I have no enemies, but I can say that they fear me. I am wrestling with the Great Questions, and those I am on the journey with share the same curiosity.

I have, in short, an awesome life, and I love it.

That is all.

Revenge is a dish best served cold.

There I was, stuffing envelopes for a worthy cause.

Suddenly, my blood ran cold, and the crisp inflections of my old nemesis rang in my ears...

"He tasks me.
He tasks me and I shall have him!
I'll chase him 'round the moons of Nibia and 'round the Antares Maelstrom and 'round Perdition's flames before I give him up!"

Occasionally, very occasionally, I wonder if I watch too much Star Trek.

...Nah

Megan Stack on Adrenaline

I've tried to hone some small skill as a writer through my blog.  Sometimes I read back over my turns of phrase and wince. Sometimes, I grant myself some small satisfaction. Sometimes.

Rarely, however, have I been completely arrested, I mean stopped dead in my tracks, by a passage in someone's writing. I was listening to an ABC Radio podcast from the Byron Bay writer's festival yesterday (god I sound like a snob) and something really, really grabbed me.
To appreciate it, you only need this context; Megan Stack is a journalist who has covered conflict zones (22 countries) for nine years. In this interview she relates the emotional ups and downs of facing intense war zones and real dangers, and then trying to acclimatise to the pedestrian life back home on furlough. She's written a book, and this passage is about being addicted to adrenaline. The interviewer reads this passage:

"Adrenaline is the strongest drug when it floods your veins, the world smears around you in a carousel spin. Except that each detail is crisp and hard, the colours are not negotiable, the hardness of shadow and sunlight cuts you, but they feel good and real and you keep on standing. Words drift for hours and days on the surface of your thoughts, gathering like algae. Ever since the mass funeral I've had these words in my head. Killing the dead, killing the dead. People look like ancient animals, lurching over some primordial land. A single bird's cry is clean and hard enough to carve your skin. This is why people get addicted. When adrenaline really gets going, you can't get sick, you don't need sleep and you feel you can do anything. I know when this is over it'll be like dying."

The audience then breaks into sustained applause.
Wow... Just, wow.
 I'm decidedly not an adrenaline junkie; this passage doesn't describe me. But isn't that powerful writing? I know nothing of this journalist, or her book, Every Man in this Village is a Liar. I'm pretty sure I would disagree with Megan's politics, but I'm in awe of her prose.

On the Inevitability of a Serious Flood in the Hawkesbury

June 2022 Update

Regular readers of my blog may know I was elected to Hawkesbury City Council in 2016, and was re-elected to a second term  in December 2021.

I served on the Board of the Hawkesbury River County Council from 2016-2021 and also as its deputy Chair and Chairman between 2018 and 2021.

I have used my position as an elected representative to continue to advocate for my community – who endure the greatest unmitigated flood risk in Australia – and to ask the State and Federal governments to urgently commit to capital works for flood mitigation including raising Warragamba Dam.

My main writings on flooding are at my Councillor Website. You'll find much more current content there. 

Also, please follow me on Facebook, Youtube and Instagram. You'll get more there.

-Nathan. 

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2nd March 2012 update: It's funny; I use a hit counter service to track who arrives at my blog and what they've typed into Google to get here. Every time it pours rain, I get a "flood" (pun intended) of traffic of people Googling "flooding", "Hawkesbury", "Nepean", and, amusingly "will my house flood in (insert almost every locality in the Hawkesbury Nepean basin)"

Nothing like a bit of rain to get people worried, is there? And it looks like the spillway will be opened at Warragamba for something like 14 years tonight. Everyone's going to wake up in the morning to the threat of bridges closed and all the inconvenience and danger that entails.

In addition to the below remarks I made a year ago, I feel more strongly than ever that people who live in on a flood plain need to better educate themselves about what has happened before. Certainly, the deluge (there I go again) of traffic shows people are interested.

Permit me to endorse the work of the Hawkesbury Nepean Flood Mitigation Action Committee, a group who have agitated for better long term planning, action and education in this area for many years. Harangue your state members. Speak to your local Councillors. Go to your Council and work out what level your house sits at, and acquaint yourselves with how frequently your area, or areas near you have gone under in the last 220 years.

Also, as a Hawkesbury/Nepean local, you might want to subscribe or favourite the other writings of my blog, as I range over subjects diverse and fascinating. Love to hear your feedback!

-Nathan

Extent of the 1867 flood in the Hawkesbury (from Hawkesbury Council)

I hate to say it, but it is inevitable that one day we will have a flood in the Hawkesbury-Nepean as least as serious as the historic one we are currently seeing Queensland, and it won't be until then that we'll get real action on flood mitigation in this area.

Then all the pollies will wail about the loss of property and life, all the residents who've moved into the area and have no idea what it's like to live on a floodplain will ask why they were allowed to build or buy in flood-prone areas, and all the Cassandras will say "we warned you for years, and you ignored us."

The map above shows the extent of the largest historical flood experienced in the Hawkesbury, in 1867. If you live around the Hawkesbury, there are two markers you need to visit. One is a nail in the outside wall of the Macquarie Arms pub at Windsor. A second is in the grounds of Windsor Public School. If you cast your eyes across from either of those points and use your imagination, you may get a sense of the scale of a major flood. The water reached that level in 1867. Now look at that map again. If you live in the Hawkesbury, there's a better than even chance that your home lays in that blue area, since our population is densest around Windsor, South Windsor, Bligh Park, Richmond and so on. And any flood will not have to be of the scale of the 1867 event to be catastrophic. This year marks 50 years since the last big flood in living memory, in 1961. It's a common misconception of statistics to think that a statistically overdue event becomes more likely as time passes, but it underlines that a generation of Hawkesbury and Penrith area residents have little personal experience of a big flood. The terrible things we are seeing on TV today will one day play out in our own back yards. Why should we believe that something that has happened many times before will not happen again?

Warragamba dam is not a flood mitigation dam. It has a capacity of 4 sydney harbours. It will only reduce flooding by the amount of storage it has available when it starts raining, which at the moment is 1 sydharb (It is 73% full) (2nd March 2012 note: It is now over 98% full and has increased by 0.5% in less than a day).

Warragamba's catchment extends from Lithgow to Lake George near Canberra. It could easily fill in 1-2 days. Wivenhoe dam (Brisbane) is a flood mitigation dam, holding 5 Sydharbs, 3 for drinking and 2 for flood mitigation. As you just witnessed this is to reduce frequent little floods. It does little to reduce a major flood event.

The rivers flowing through Rockhampton recently received something like 300+ sydharbs in a month. Talk of flood mitigation in that catchment is just that, talk.

Unfortunately, if the catchment above warragamba received anything like the rainfall recently seen in Qld, or Vic for that matter, the free capacity in warragamba would be of little significance.


So what will we do? What should be being done now?