WHATEVER HAPPENED TO HOLY MAN'S DOUBLE ?

Maharishi

Follow up  to  ABC  Compass documentary  

When the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi  came to Sydney in the late 1960s he was interviewed by a reporter, Graham Gambie , who  bore a  remarkable resemblance to  him.  With unruly  hair  and  a  beard , Gambie  worked  on the Sun-Herald, puffed  fat, roll your owns. He went  with  the  Maharishi when he  inspected a  possible  site for a transcendental  meditation  centre in  Sydney.
 

Gambie  was  so interested in the Indian way of  life  that  he  went  there and  lived ; reporters jokingly said he  became a " holy man " himself. This writer  attended a  farewell party  for  Graham  in  a  Paddington  pad  heavy with  the  smell  of  pot .

 

Some   time  later , an  Englishman  came  into  the  Sun-Herald  and said  he had been  travelling  in  India when a man  "popped out" of  a  cave , struck up a conversation  and  introduced himself as  Graham Gambie. When the man said he was going  to Sydney, Gambie  told him to  drop into the newspaper office  and  say  hello  for  him .

There were  reports of  Gambie  building  a  dwelling  out  of cow  dung ,the   cave , him  becoming  an   assistant  teacher  in a  meditation centre.  There he met a woman, she left  for Japan, came back  and they married .Then they   returned to Sydney in the late 1970s where  he  built up a reputation as  an  investigative reporter  during  Premier   Askin's  corrupt  reign  in  NSW.

In his extensive writings  about the corruption  in NSW, Australia's top investigative reporter , Evan  Whitton, who has long campaigned for  major reform  to the archaic legal system (see The  Cartel : Lawyers and their Nine Magic Tricks )  mentioned  Gambie's reporting . One case involved the unsolved murder of Sallie-Anne Huckstepp,prostitute, heroin addict, writer  and whistleblower, who made a sworn statement  that  she  had paid money to members of  the  Vice Squad , Drug Squad and  Armed Holdup  Squad.

 Her  body was later found in  Busby Pond, Centennial  Park.  Notorious criminal Arthur  "Neddy" Smith was recorded  saying he  had  murdered  her, but later  claimed he knew he was being  taped  and made the statement  to  promote  a book  about his  criminal life. 

 The  brutal saga  involved Huckstepp's boyfriend,heroin dealer and standover man, Warren Lanfranchi ,shot dead by Detective Sergeant Roger Rogerson  , in  what  was  claimed  by her  to  have  been  an  execution.

 Huckstepp inspired a song, Sallie-Anne, by the band  Spy vs Spy . Rogerson and another  former detective, Glen McNamara,are to appear in the NSW Supreme Court in July charged with the murder  of student Jamie  Gao and supplying ice . Both have pleaded  not guilty. 

Gambie  also drew attention to the  Crown of Thorns starfish attacking the  Great Barrier  Reef . About to go  on a holiday to New Zealand with his wife , he was   found to  have a  massive tumour on the  brain.

He died June 27,1986. That same month , a study , Accountability of the Legal System, of District Court sentences of 276 defendants in cases of serious drug offences 1980-82, funded by the Australian Criminology Research Council and conducted  by Professor Anthony Vinson, Professor of Social Work, University of New South Wales, Morag Caroll and Natalie Bolzan and Arthur King  was completed  and dedicated to the late Sun-Herald disclosure journalist, Graham  Gambie. Excerpts  from an  article  he  wrote ,  AS IT WAS / AS IT IS , were  included  in  the THE  ART  OF  DYING , by Sanjay PS.