Dream outlives the shame

'Centrepoint has been terminated,' declares the answerphone. WAYNE THOMPSON visits a community renewing itself from the ashes of infamy.

Number 14, Mills Lane, Albany, has the silence and emptiness of a forestry village where the sawmill has closed and only a handful of people remain.

The feeling is reinforced by the 29ha of bush and pasture that cocoon the cluster of mellowed, wooden buildings from the motorway, hobby farmlets and valleys filling with townhouses.

This is Anahata, a fledgling community named after the old Hindu term for balance.

It has taken over the home of the controversial Centrepoint, a community that lost its balance and toppled after child-sex and drug offences by its leader, Bert Potter, and others.

The interests of Potter and his followers were bought out for $1.25 million in a High Court-sanctioned deal in March, and they moved out.

Phone Anahata and you get a blunt recorded message: "Centrepoint has been terminated."

Shaking off the shame of Centrepoint is now the challenge of a band of 28 people, including eight small children. Only two Anahata folk once belonged to Centrepoint.

The community has been given a chance by a replacement trust, which holds assets of $8 million, to rekindle the promise of a communal life.

"Usually, communities are away back in the sticks. This one is unique in being right on the edge of the city near schools and jobs," says an Anahata spokesman, Chris, who does not want his full name used.

A 53-year-old Londoner - and a fitter and turner by trade - Chris travelled the 70s Indian "hippy trail" and says he always wanted to live in a community.

He found Centrepoint five years ago, and stayed.

"This was too good a resource to let go to waste."

Now he is showing off the former Centrepoint's industrial money-making centre ... the deserted mechanical and carpentry workshops, the factories where ceramics, hats, wooden puzzles and gymnasium weights were made, the art studio, and the print shop where the community once produced its own magazine.

"Everything's here waiting for craftspeople," says Chris, in the positive tone of a real estate salesman trying to instil possibilities into the mind of a buyer.

Anahata has all the facilities any commune could want, including the second-biggest swimming pool in North Shore City, and a dedicated preschool unit once registered for 26.

It just needs people.

Chris sometimes wonders whether it is too hard a task to rebuild the community.

But today he is buoyant. The previous night's house meeting welcomed to the community a Christian couple and their three children.

That is a leap forward, says Chris, considering the community dwindled to a dozen before the fresh start in July.

There is plenty more room for newcomers in the old longhouses built for communal sleeping but which are now partitioned to give families privacy.

The longhouses are nestled into terraces, overlooking a spacious building where residents cook, eat, clean and socialise.

The buildings and 12.1ha of bush are leased from the new owner, the Communities Growth Trust, which is run by the Public Trust Office.

The trust supports former Centrepoint members, their children and others who have been harmed by "cult abuse."

Money for the lease comes from the board that members pay to cover household running costs.

They can rent community space for their businesses, or work outside the community.

The present members' occupations include doctor, graphic designer, computer software designer, musician, nursery worker, and helper of the disabled.

Chris says the new trust deed does not demand that members sign over their wealth.

They keep their personal bank accounts. They pay board by the week, so if they want to leave there is no financial tie to stay.

"It's easy to leave but hard to get in," says Chris.

Residents must accept the trust deed's code, which bans behaviour that is physically, verbally, sexually, emotionally or otherwise abusive to others.

This time around, he says, all members will have their voices heard and proposals will not be decided without the agreement of all.

"The new community is concerned that no one creates an empire, and that people will speak up when they are concerned.

"There will be no new Bert Potters."

New residents shrug off the past.

"We are completely Anahata," says Pippa Black, who has moved from suburban Glenfield with her husband and three children, aged 18 months to 5 years.

"It's almost a tribal way of living," she says.

"Children can see what work adults have to do and can help do it. I take great pride in my 5-year-old helping to wash the dishes.

"It is a safe place, and children have the freedom to just be.

"We help each other ... It's like an old-fashioned village."