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C. Doreen Phillips, The Autobiography of A Fortune Teller (1958)

The Autobiography of a Fortune Teller is quite possibly the strangest book in the Menzies Collection – for the author claimed to have a message given from beyond the grave by a deceased John Curtin.

C. Doreen Phillips is described on the inside cover as clairvoyant who was born with her brother Harry:

‘at Horsmonden, Kent, England, the youngest of seven children of Stephen Bowles, a builder. An accident in childhood forced her to face life with a physical handicap – a severe limp. Eventually, she became a fortuneteller, she says, because she did not want to be a shut-in; she wanted to talk to people.

For many years she and her brother made their home together, “travelled and suffered and succeeded together.” When Harry died, faced with the loneliness which, ironically, is a part of a fortuneteller’s life, she was prompted to investigate the psychic powers which she had always used, but never understood. She did … and learned of “a great destiny for myself and others”’.

The author sent a copy to Menzies, claiming that it was ‘To The Hon. Robert G. Menzies Prime Minister of Australia from John Curtin in the spirit world.’ She then directed him to turn to page 168 because ‘I promised John Curtin I would get his message to you, and it is a true message’.

When one follows her instructions, you find that the message from John Curtin goes on for several pages urging the need for Australia to attract immigrants from all over the world:

‘say a word to the new Australians, and let them know that John Curtin is still in evidence, although they cannot see me. It is just across the border here, just a little thin veil. I can be closer to them now and help them’.

The message then proceeds to explain that Australia needs to raise its exports, even if they have to lower their own tariff barriers in the process. Australia should also invest in air freight, which the ‘spirit’ seemed to think would quickly eclipse international shipping. And then it ends:

‘We must expand Australia. There was that very tight, closed feeling for so long, but labor conditions are improved now…God bless you and keep you. This is John Curtin from the land of the spirit’.

Arguably the most bizarre thing about the message is its mundane nature – a deceased prime minister is allegedly able to speak to the living and all they use that opportunity for is to advise on immigration, tariffs and export strategies. If one were being generous, they might suggest that there is some element of fortune telling in critiquing core aspects of the ‘Australian Settlement’ which would finally come crashing down in the 1980s. In this sense, one might jokingly suggest that the book is evidence of Curtin’s endorsement of the Hawke-Keating economic reforms – but in more tangible terms, it is an artefact of a remarkably accessible prime minister who not only received Phillips’s book, but kept it. It is difficult to imagine someone sending something like this to a modern political leader and getting that far.