It is recommended that you read the page on Dreamtime 79 founder and leader Ray “Millenium Ray” Author, as a prologue to this story.
1971 – The Great Film Robbery
Production on Outback Valhalla ran into trouble almost immediately.
Rumors of wild parties, drug taking and orgies (and very little filming) began to leak from the closed set. Executives and media were banned from seeing any footage of the production and so it was unknown if these rumors were fact or fiction.
The film continued to run over budget and past numerous deadlines, which prompted the studio to threaten a complete shut down. During a tense meeting with executives, Author (now sporting long hair and beard) promised the studio that the film would be ready to preview in two weeks.
Nearly six months after production began, a special premiere event was organized for studio executives and investors, however Author and his crew were not in attendance.
Nick Ballad, one of the Gold Emu executives who was in attendance, gave us this account:
“To describe the film as a mess was an understatement, it could barely be considered to be a movie. There was no discernable plot, no visual consistancy…. it was simply an ongoing stream of indecipherable footage, assembled together with no rhyme or reason….. Some of the footage contained large groups of people having sex, other footage appeared to be accidental, out of focus, as if the camera had just been left on and forgotten about.”
The studio was furious, but by the time they had assembled to confront Author, he had disappeared. It turned out that he had also disappeared with the majority of the money the studio had invested (very little of which was used on the film) as well as film supplies such as cameras, lighting and film stock. In addition to the theft, almost the entire cast and crew of the film had followed him. With no flagship film for the studio, and so much of their money invested in this film, they were forced to close a short time later.
An ongoing investigation into the whereabouts of Author yielded no results.
1972 – 1981 The Legend of Millennium Ray
It wasn’t untill 5 years later, in 1976, that reports of Author’s wherabouts began to surface. Stories of a compound that appeared somewhere near Author’s home of Ozone started to circulate. While many regarded the stories as myth, small groups made the pilgrimage to Ozone and it’s surrounds in order to discover the notorious figure and his band of followers. Most of those that ventured off to find him returned, reporting that there simply was no compound to be found. A few did not return at all. Whether they managed to find and join the fabled cult or not remains unknown.
1982 – The Sinister Secret of the Dreamtime 79
At around 6:30 am, on March 16th 1982, a pregnant woman named Pure Opal arrived at Sydney Metro Police Station, claiming to be a member of the Dreamtime 79 cult.
She had fled the cult almost a month earlier, stating that she “could no longer live in that place….there was no way (she) could bring up a baby there”
According to her statement, Opal was one of the original members of the cult, an actress on the ill-fated production of Outback Valhalla. Throughout her statement, she refers to Author as Ray, and that he was an extremely charismatic and influential personality who had seduced the group with the promise of a life in paradise. During the filming of Outback Valhalla, the intoxicating combination of drugs, free love and Author’s notion of a “new eden” lead the group to follow him to Queensland without question.
She says that Author had the Dreamtime 79 desert compound built while they were working on the film in Sydney, using the money provided by the studio. She also states that the group had started producing their own films immediately after settling at the compound. Author had numerous scripts and outlines for films, and maintained that productions were important to help bond the group, and to provide entertainment.
Years later, Opal began an romantic relationship with Author, during which time he drunkenly confessed to her that the Dreamtime 79 films were littered with subliminal messages and symbols, designed to recruit new members of the cult. He had claimed that eventually they could “make movies for companies, products, andgovernments – using the power of film to influence minds“. It was at this point that Opal saw Author’s lust for power and influence was going down a terrible road. When she discovered that she was pregnant, Opal finally ecided to leave the cult. Upon her escape, Opal claims to have set fire to the compound studio, destroying the many years of Author and the cult’s work. She claims the last thing she saw as she drove away was the large warehouse engulfed in flames against the desert night sky.
“When he told me his plan, it was like waking up from a dream. At first it seemed so childish…naieve… But then I realized that somehow he’d convinced all of us to
join him out in the desert, to leave our lives and make these strange and obscure films…and I wondered if maybe he could pull it off, somehow, and at that moment I knew I had to leave.”
“I considered taking others with me. I had friends there. They were good people, but when I even broached the topic that something wasn’t quite right with what we were doing, I recieved looks of horror and disbelief. We were brainwashed…we were living out there for years in a trance. For me, getting pregnant, something changed, but for everyone else they seemed content to just be a part of Ray’s big plan…even if they didn’t know quite what it all meant.”
When asked what the significance of the name Dreamtime 79 was, Opal replied “I have no idea, i don’t think anybody except Ray knows…at the time nobody ever questioned Ray or his ideas, but the truth is none of us ever really understood them…he was lost in his own head, and for a while we all became lost there too…”
1983 – Vanished
A week after Opal’s testimony, a detail was sent from Sydney Metro to the Dreamtime 79 compound. All the information given by Opal was corroborated by what was found, right down the the destroyed studio. All that was missing was the residents. It appeared that the entire cult (estimated to be around 50 people) had vanished without a trace. To this day the whereabouts of Ray “Millennium Ray” Author and the members of the Dreamtime 79 remain a mystery.
Following her testimony, Pure Opal was put into witness protection.
The disappearance of Ray Author and the Dreamtime 79 remains a cold case. If you have any information pertaining to the Ray Author, the Dreamtime 79, or the films produced by the cult – we’d love to hear from you.
