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ABCs GTK Youth Programme Fred Robinson and Stephen Carthew (1971):
(Transcript and Commentary/Analysis. This is a full transcript of this programme; ellipses have been used to simulate broken sentences and where grammar did not apply, rather than to indicate omissions of dialogue; all the dialogue used in the film appears in bold. The location of this televised interview for GTK was my back garden at Pine Grove in Bayview on Pittwater, a Northern Beaches suburb of Sydney. At this time it had become known as a New Age Information Centre and was the Headquarters of The Universal Foundation in Australiaan Australian branch of a short lived English movement. Fred Robinson and I are seen walking in the garden to the gentle sounds of The Moody Blues singing the song OM, the last track of the their 1968 Album In Search of the Lost Chord. This spiritualisation of the interview, even before it has begun, strikes quite a different note to the earlier Four Corners programme, the New Breed of Farmers. Fred is no longer an advisor on something as mundane as organic gardening. The cosmic questioning of the interviewer and indeed my own relationship to Fred, virtually announces him as a sage and guru and the Space Captain of the space cadets. Later Mary would capitalise on this Space Captain theme, designing a sequinned headband and a well-groomed, pure white beard with long flowing hair to matchthe look of a cool sage for a new generation.

Between 1968-75 GTK was produced at ABCs Television Studios at Gore Hill; Bernie Cannon who produced and directed the show had the view that all aspects of youth culture should be explored. He was out there as his comments about the show reveal: Every Monday morning, rain or shine, this place used to explode. In 1971, I became producer/director for the 'GTK' series. 'GTK' meant 'getting to know', and it was aimed at a youth culture, a youth audience, to inform, entertain and otherwise amuse http://www.abc.net.au/dimensions/dimensions_in_time/Transcripts/s560023.htm (accessed 5.10.09).

OM is a 1968 song by the British progressive rock band The Moody Blues. It was composed by the band's keyboardist Mike Pinder. The sound OM which is chanted repeatedly throughout the song, represents Aum, a sacred mantra in the Hindu, Jain and Buddhist religions. On the album, OM is preceded by a short spokenword interlude named The Word, written by drummer Graeme Edge and recited by Mike Pinder; The Word explains the album's concept, and that the mantra Om is the lost chord referenced in the album's title, which concludes with: To name the chord is important to some. So they give it a word, And the word is "Om" In Search of the Lost Chord may be considered a concept album because several of the tracks deal with the theme of a person's search for spiritual fulfilment and the search for a mythical lost chord. OM has a very similar influence and sound to the Beatles 1967 song Within You Without You, which was written by George Harrison.

While Fred was not a follower of contemporary music, the matching of some of the more spiritual tones of this Eastern style of music with his interviews was to become almost the norm. So, in this interview The Moody Blues set the scene:
Music Lyrics: The rain is on the roof Hurry high, butterfly The clouds all pass my head I know why the skys all dry Aum Heaven Aum The earth turns slowly round Far away the distant sound Is with us everyday Can you hear what its a saying? Aum Heaven Aum

By the conclusion of this song Fred has sat down with the youth who is wearing a cool looking Thai shirt:
Stephen Carthew: Well, Ive been doing the same sort of thing as Fred, for a much shorter time of course, for about six months before I heard about him up North. We got in touch and the very same afternoon there was a film-crew coming out here to do a short thing about organic gardening and so Fred was involved in that. Since then we have just been working, and I have been working with him and organising his talks and trying to get him to as many young people as possible because he has information that is most valuable to them.

My comments here reveal the speed at which I had become involved with the New Age movement. I was leap-frogging over my drug experiences, and then my mentors, to become an outpost of both Anthony Brookes Universal Foundation and Peter and Eileen Caddys Findhorn, only about six months before taking on the role of Fred Robinsons promoter. It is interesting that at the end of this statement I speak in terms of trying to provide a service in getting Freds information out to young peoplebecause it is most valuable to them. I am already speaking as his partner in the New Age, even though it is just a couple of weeks since I met him. The Sydney Town Hall had not yet been booked.
Fred Robinson: To me there are two groups of young people: the irresponsible ones and the responsible ones. This message is to the responsible people of Australia.

This is an example of a Robinsonesque binarythe either/or positioning, and the extreme qualifications that so dominated his teachings. It is this black and white rhetoric that I

suspect made his talks so unpalatable to most of the older generationand so available to youth. There is such clarity in the irresponsible/responsible, purity/pollution, right/wrong, truth/falsehood/, good/evil positions. Although Fred and Mary did understand that everything was relative (as he said it many times), what came across was a spirituallyqualified, counter-cultural goodness and purity which still became an alternative dogmatism that tended to widened the generation gap. Rather than being involved in bridging the generation gap Fred turned it into a chasm. While Fred did recognise that everyone was in the process of making changes he raised the bar so high, and so quickly, that many earnest seekers who heard him, after looking hard at themselves, and contemplating the soul polishing that would be needed, just walked away from the challenge. Others, who had begun the process of making the changes Fred was suggesting, considered that they might not be one of the responsible ones, and so felt considerable guilt and tension. I know I often doubted my own worthiness. If I did, and I had many pats-onthe-back for my early pioneering and organising efforts, then others who heard Fred and later came to the community must have felt something similarand a lot more. When seeking assistance from Mary or one of the untrained Centre Core members, or just trying to handle such issues themselves, it is likely that some of these tensions morphed into feeling controlled and put upon. Some of this surfaced later as the community grew, and was the focus of the Compass programmes representations of the community as a place where power and control over members was practised. Even in this early period however, Fred was urging the need for being disciplined, and organised.
GTK: What are you trying to tell them?

Fred wanted to tell us so many things, that here he repeats part of the question, just to give himself time to pick which one he will focus on at that moment. He chose organisation versus the haphazard approach.
Fred Robinson: I am trying to tell them that they will not get the alternative way of life, which is essential now, without organisation not being organised but doing it in an organised manner. They must know the principles of creation. They must know what it is they are trying to create, and go about it not in a haphazard manner but in a very, very orderly manner; and we are trying to bring order into their way of thinking and their approach.

Although Fred sought to bring order to our thinking, he also introduced so many new mindblowing (as we used to say) concepts, that we became confusedsometimes making human organisation, and the order involved in it, almost seem a waste of time. There seemed to be so much happening, and at such a speed, that we ourselves became a little too speedy and intense.
GTK: A lot of young people are going to a commune style of living. It hasnt worked for them. How has it worked for you?

This is a very good question, especially since it hadnt worked for one of Freds heroes, John Balou Newbrough, or the community he started (Shalam on the Rio Grandebased on Oahspes blueprint); nor had it worked for Fred at ROTA at Browns Plains; nor in Northern Queensland where he had also tried to start a community. While he and Mary were having success as a couple, on their somewhat self-sufficient five acres at Shalam, running a New Age Information Centre in WA, it is not true that it had worked for him and Mary as a community. The community initiatives had never lived up to their hopes, always falling away when Freds push came to shove. The Robinsons had by now put all their hopes on the new Aquarian generation, since Fred firmly believed this new generation could make it happen before it was too lateif only they had a few tips that he knew would make a difference. Fred didnt answer the exact question he was askedhe rarely did. He unconsciously fashioned answers to serve the needs of the moment as he saw them rather than the wants of the interviewer. Nonetheless it was an insightful answer:
Fred Robinson: Simply because they had not known how to bring in the new alternative society. They are doing wrong in that so many of them a big percentage of them are simply animated by a desire to escape from the existing chaos of civilisation; that is the main objective of a big proportion of them. Theyre Ahh how shall I put it they have no clear cut plan of what they want to do except to get away from the cities.

Freds clear cut plan was, in his own words, based on the blueprint (as he often called it) outlined in Oahspe: A New Bible in the Words of Jehovih (1882). I believe that Fred saw himself as doing his bit in faithfully answering Jehovihs (Gods) command: Go, bring my

This is not a typographical error, Oahspe employs this spelling for the Creator (God)in distinction to the many gods that the Creator created to expand and administer the universe.

people out of Uz [the world], and found them in a place by themselves; for now is the beginning of the founding of My kingdom on earth (Book of Shalam Oahspe, Chapt. 1:4).
GTK: What brought you to this sort of philosophy?

Turning now to me as a representative of the youthful audience of GTK, the interviewer has asked me a question that I didnt quite answer either:
Stephen Carthew: Just a greater understanding seeing things from a greater understanding. Seeing things from a point of view that wasnt belief; wasnt speculation. For a long while I was speculating, believing and wondering and so on but now I dont have to believe that I breathe I know I breathe and it has nothing to do with religion. Its just a cosmic point of view.

Hearing young people (as I was then) reflectively saying for a long while , makes me wince. The knowing smile that came across my enlightened twenty-three year-old face, and the matter-of-fact way I shared my cosmic point of view line, gave the impression that I thought I had nailed this question for all time and that impression was right, for I thought I had. I am a little happier with the following line, although by now my knowingness and purity would have become somewhat irritating to all but similarly knowing and pure under twenty-five-year-olds.
Stephen Carthew (cont.) We talk about a counter-culture [laughing] and there we are in Glebe with fish and chips, smoking a cigarette in one hand and a joint in the other [I think that made three hands ed.]; and the whole thing is just a joke. Its not a counter-culture at all its just completely going with the old culture and sinking right to the lowest depths. We have to get out into the country, into a natural environment with pure water and

The editor cut me off at this pointsmart moveI was just getting into full stride.

The following question, coming as it was from a clearly already engaged seeker, was the kind of question that Fred really appreciated, for it created an opportunity to make an appeal directly to the younger target audience, who in Freds opinion had the capacity to intuitively comprehend the import of what he was saying.
GTK: As far as you are concerned the people of the Aquarian Age, which I think started in 1962, are in fact a new people.

Bernie Cannon knew a fair bit about the Age of Aquarius, and with a New Age interviewer Fred was in his element. The spirit is flowing through him; and with a response rehearsed for thirty years, Fred is coming across well. The subject is, after all, exceptionally relevant on a youth programme:
Fred Robinson: They are definitely. The way I put it is this. The old human race. Spell it this way H-U dash M-A-N ... hu-man. In the old language it means carnivorous tiger like animal. Now then, the word Mankind it means a Race of Kind Men and Women, who would never hurt or kill anything. The New Race belongs to the Race of Mankind. This is part of a Great Universal Plan a New Race for a New Age, under New Conditions. Ive been speaking for the last thirty-five years to their parents. This old generation were either quite incapable of comprehending the gigantic changes that must be brought about; or they were so fixed in their beliefs of the past fixed beliefs they thought were true!

Here Fred draws on an old language, perhaps Atlantian or Lemurian, which he had nodoubt read about in some obscure channelture which advanced both Vegetarianism and the New Race of Mankind by making the distinction between them and the bestial Humans, or Uzians, as Oahspe called them. It is worth remembering that the definition of humane characterises qualities of kindness, mercy and compassionat odds with Freds old-language definition. There is a great deal of irony in Freds last emphatic statement for Fred had many fixed beliefs himself, although he reframed all his beliefs as universal Truths. Understandably tooits what most religious teachers did in the Modernist era. While he did have many insights and much valuable information, it was his New Age dogmatism that made his discourse so unappealing to a more discerning and wary older generation, who saw Fred as a crank, while he saw them as incapable of understanding and lacking the spiritual faculties. However, they were clearly capable of understanding that a number of Freds statements were indeed fixed beliefs even though they might have been new ones. Enough of my generation however believed that they could know the truth that Fred was espousing especially since it proved what we already knew: that we were a new breed of

In the text of Freds response I employed Robinsonian Capitalisationfollowing Freds and Marys style of capitalising words they felt should be given special importance and/or reverence. I have been unable to locate the source, but I remember Fred telling me at the time, and that this word Human had been revealed by a reliable source meaning any channel that Fred believed had brought through the truth.

people for a New Age. Our parents were thus unlikely to comprehend try as we might to educate them.
GTK: Well, I agree with you that the generation gap does exist. What you are trying to tell me is that there is no chance of changing it.

Bernie was on the ball as Fred used to say about people who could intuitively perceive and agree with what he was talking about. Fred eagerly jumps in to further expound on this subject: a somewhat delicate one, considering his own age:
Fred Robinson: There is no chance of changing it where the mass of the people are concerned. In the older generation there are individuals ah like myself There are many other individuals like myself, who have been aware Ive been aware for forty years, since I was ruined in the last Great Depression; and that gave me the time to investigate. This is the word for the young people for heavens sake Investigate!

The Interviewer now turns to the question of the Space People. This topic was the one that distinguished Fred from all other teachers and gurus of the periodand unfortunately for the community, the one topic that would define it in the minds of those who heard him speak or read anything about him, for it was the medias favourite focus, and part of the emplotment of the Robinsons. Even though this subject was never the driving force or focus of the community that evolved from Freds teachings, from a journalistic perspective this topic was the most engaging, fascinating and amusing and all at once. To a journalist this was akin to a miner hitting a rich vein of gold.
GTK: You mention Space People and things of this nature. Is that not a little remote from the way that

Fred enthusiastically cuts him off before any more valuable time is wasted. He intuitively designed his own rules of engagement with journalists and had the inner freedom to play fast and loose with them. Over the years he became as media savvy as those media figures who later, after the interview and often on the insistence of an editor, emplotted him in their stories. Live television was Freds favourite medium.

Unfortunately a full half-hour of a live interview with an Adelaide current affairs interviewer has been lost. It is believed to be the best media interview he ever did, causing a torrent of requests for repeating it, which it wasseveral times. But unfortunately we were too busy building the new order to order a copy.

8 Fred Robinson: No. Its at the very core of understanding. Understanding is the key word for the Aquarian Age. We have come out of the Piscean Age, which was an age of ignorance which lasted 2,000 years. It was an age of darkness; a negative age; an age of many, many conflicting beliefs and opinions; an age of dividing people up in to many, many opposing groups. Divide and conquer was the motto. Well now, the Aquarian Age is the Age of Enlightenment, great knowledge is pouring into the world. Where from? The Space People thats where it is coming from!

Here some strange, other worldly music break occurred, over a close up of Freds white head of hair and his hearing-aid; followed by a close-up of his Rosicrucian bejewelled Cross and his hands. The reflective break of about thirty seconds was clearly designed to allow the young audience to get their heads around the blast-into-the-future that Fred had just delivered them. Perhaps there was some commentary over this which was included during the screening. In any case this is the climax of this programme. The interviewer is with Fred. It is an enigmatic climaxthe audience can, at this point, either take the answer to the next question seriously, or read it as undercutting everything else already revealed.
GTK: Where are the Space People from? Fred Robinson: All parts of the galaxy in spite of our scientists saying no one could travel the massive distances because they would all be hundreds of years old getting there they can travel infinite distances in a very short time. We wont discuss the technique here but it is so. GTK: For example flying saucers are one form of travel if you like

Once again Fred interrupts the question, excited by the enthusiasm of the questioner.
Fred Robinson: Of course flying saucers in the main travel inside the mother ships. They are the vessels they use when they come into the atmosphere of the planet mainly that is what they are used for.

No doubt exhausted by his encounter with Fred, the journalist turns his attention to another subject religion.
GTK: Do you see yourself as a Christian? Fred Robinson: No I dont it is outmoded. The Christian countries have not followed the teachings of Jesus, otherwise we would have had the Brotherhood of Man established on this planet Centuries ago. For the New Age, the Aquarian Age, I am a follower of the teachings of Jesus, establishing the Brotherhood of Man.

I suspect they cut a few words here, because Fred almost always followed a statement about his religious convictions regarding the Brotherhood of Man with the phrase under the Fatherhood of God. Fred did not make here the distinction he usually made when discussing his belief in the teachings of Jesus. He would usually add, as distinct from the teachings about Jesusand he would usually emphasise the of and the about.
GTK: Do you think the so called Jesus-Revolution is valid? Fred Robinson: Of course it is valid because the young people have seen through all the misinterpretations put upon the Teachings of Jesus and they have broken through this centuries-old misinterpretation of what he came to do. He came to uplift the whole human race into a much higher level of loving, conscious understanding, and that is what is coming right now with the young people.

..................................... While this GTK interview took place only a few weeks after the Four Corners interview, the results were very different. There are a number of reasons for this: GTK was a youth programme, not a mainstream programme; I am not in a coat, being the biodynamic scientist, as I was depicted in the Four Corners filmhere I am decidedly a counter-culturalist; Fred had been constrained by the Four Corners interviewer to stay off the Flying saucer issue. Here it was encouraged by a sympathetic interviewer. The film makers were overtly playing to the interest in spiritual issues the Moody Blues song OM set the stage for this. It occurs to me that this GTK programme would have been relevant to a very small section of its audiencebut they are all Getting to Know Fred Robinson. In a sense Fred is a dream figure. Almost everyone in Australia would have seen or read about him and the later Universal Brotherhood. While not remembered specifically, the depictions of Fred as a white-haired sage, and the descriptions of our alternative, back-to-the-land yet spiritual community (as the working model of Freds ideas) must still live in the cultural consciousness of those who heard about him/usas unidentified alternative archetypes of the ideal spiritual community and the back-to-the-land dream.