Tarotmancer: A brief biography of Colin Amery

Bronwyn Rideout - 10 June 2024

Part 2: To New Zealand, the stars, and then back to earth

We last left the story of Colin Amery at the precipice of his 2nd attempt at immigration to the Pacific, this time following his pregnant girlfriend back to her home country of New Zealand. Before he departed the UK, he decided to stage a UFO ‘talk-down’ on Hampstead Heath. Amery fails to provide any further detail on what a UFO talk-down is exactly, but boy did it deliver.

As Amery recalls in his memoir, the talk down promised to be a UFO-sighting rally to coincide with the autumn equinox. The event allegedly received some press from BBC Radio and the Manchester Guardian, but evidence of this publicity has not been forthcoming. No UFOs had been forthcoming either and, before dawn, the only out-there visitors that appeared were several druids who were there to perform their annual rites. Suddenly a silent white light appeared to be moving swiftly in the West. Then the roar of an engine was heard, and the light revealed itself to be a simple Cessna. A nearby aviator had heard about the debacle on the radio and decided to play a prank with his Cessna by cutting his engine before he could be heard. Using his WWII flying skills he glided the rest of the way, and temporarily brought joy to the assembled before dashing their dreams just as quickly. Despite this setback, Amery’s connection to the UFO community during this time only continued to grow. He became acquainted with Ancient Astronaut proponent Erich von Däniken, and hosted him in the UK and in Auckland in 1976 as part of an interview on Radio NZ.

Arriving in NZ and anti-nuclear protesting

Amery arrived in New Zealand on February 29th, 1976, and married Alison in Wellington in August the same year. Soon after that, Amery received copies of his book, New Atlantis: The secret of the Sphinx - on the same day that his daughter, Nimüe, was born. Amery made ends meet through tarot readings and working as the sub-editor of The Dominion, until he eventually quit the latter to devote himself to the former. Amery also found time to get involved as an anti-nuclear protestor. In September 1976, Amery brought a private criminal action against Billy Tally, Captain of the nuclear-powered USS Truxtun. Under the name Donovan John Citizen McGrath, Amery charged that Tally displayed reckless disregard when he brought an explosive device into Wellington Harbour. Specifically, the USS Truxtun itself. Amery made multiple attempts to find Captain Tally in order to personally serve him a summons, but was unsuccessful. Notably, Amery hired a helicopter with the intent of dropping the summons on to the Truxtun’s deck. Had it been successful, Tally might have been required to remain in Wellington and appear in court in a fortnight. Sadly for Amery, the helicopter had to maintain a distance of a mile from the ship, and a height of at least 150 metres. Amery dropped the summons, wrapped in a copy of the local newspaper, from the helicopter, swearing that it had landed in the path of the ship.

USS Truxtun

Undeterred, Amery kept the news cycle going by claiming that he was going to hire and train a dolphin to fetch the summons at the bottom of the harbour, and then fly to Melbourne himself to deliver it.

Unsurprisingly that did not happen, and instead, Amery, Alison, and their newborn travelled around New Zealand, giving Tarot card readings and small talks about his book. They then settled in Auckland, where Amery continued to do much of the same, publishing predictions in the publication Truth. The couple also briefly operated a school of magick out of their Dominion Road home.

Then, just over a month later, in October 1976, Amery issued a summons for H.C. Schrader, Captain of another nuclear-powered guided missile cruiser called the USS Long Beach. As with Tally, Amery accused Schrader of reckless endangerment by mooring the Long Beach in Auckland Harbour. Amery saved his pennies this time, and recruited a local school teacher to paddle him out to the cruiser in a canoe. They waited 100 metres away and timed the circuits of the Police patrol boat. When the coast was clear, Amery and his accomplice paddled to the cruiser and attached the summons to the ship’s bow. They were intercepted by police on their way to shore, but were not arrested. When Amery returned the next day, he saw that the summons was no longer there. A teenager accompanying Amery, Bruce Bayliss, swam to the cruiser with another copy of the summons, and got to a launch that was moored next to the USS Long Beach. After speaking to a sailor, Bayliss dropped the summons on deck and swam away. A Magistrate eventually dismissed the information against Schrader, and Amery summarily appealed to the Supreme Court. This too failed.

USS Long Beach

Ill Fortune

Amery eventually sued Truth for breach of copyright, and started writing for a Saturday night newspaper called 8 O’Clock. In June 1977, Alison was charged with fortune-telling after charging a plainclothes police-woman $8 for a fortune; Amery represented her during the proceedings. In July, A. G Malcolm, a National MP for the Eden electorate, brought forth a petition on behalf of the couple and 137 others requesting the repeal of the section of the Police Offences Act pertaining to fortune-telling. Alison was convicted, and they had to shut the school down. Then, on a whim, they ditched Auckland on a Russian tour boat and headed to Australia, where they would soon suffer a great tragedy.

While visiting friends in Brisbane, the couple decided to leave their one and a half year old daughter in the car to sleep, rather than bring her into the house. They and other house guests took turns checking on Nimüe throughout the night, to ensure she was fine. However, the household was asleep when a freak heatwave hit the city, and sadly caused the infant to die from a heat stroke. Amery and Davidson were charged with manslaughter, but the charges were dismissed in March 1978. Due to the nature of Nimüe’s death, Amery has been in the news many times over the decades commenting on similar cases, and has always expressed profound remorse.

Going out with a literal bang

After the charges were withdrawn, but before returning to New Zealand, Alison had a premonition about Robert Muldoon and a bomb detonating while he was staying at the Sydney Hilton Hotel. The couple were unsuccessful in reaching the Prime Minister with this “news”. The next day, 3 people were killed and 11 were injured when a bomb exploded outside the Hilton during the Commonwealth Heads of Government Regional Meeting. If this incident sounds familiar, then pat yourself on the back, because I have discussed this in my article and podcast segment on the Ananda Marga sect. The couple were briefly in the limelight again, as Commonwealth police sought them for questioning.

The Sydney Hilton Bombing

Space…man

Amery relocated to Christchurch by the end of 1979, and lived with a 16-year-old named Linda. While Amery claimed in the local news that he no longer did tarot readings, for legal reasons, in his memoirs he claims to have set up a study group in the city to study magick, and did have a tarot reading circuit. According to Amery, Linda eventually left him to follow Osho in India, which left him free to pursue other lovers. Again, Amery failed to find publishers for his UFO cover-up manuscript, and left it at a local library in 1981.

The Early 80s

Amery travelled around Australia and New Zealand through the early 1980s, reading tarot and making predictions for the local newspapers. One ‘notable’ example was for the New Zealand Listener, in which he predicted a nuclear-style calamity in the northern hemisphere on April 14th, 1986. Chernobyl happened on the 26th of that month. However, his memoir makes no mention of his failure to pass the tests put forth to him by the Skeptics Society in 1986, nor of the death omens he claimed to have received before his ex-landlady stabbed him following a failed love affair that same year. During his recovery, he would meet the woman who would become his third and final wife, a poet named Yvonne Gatton.

The relationship with Gatton would come at a critical juncture for Amery, as he faced a legal battle that possibly made his legal career before it even started, and will be the jumping-off point for part 3: The private prosecution of the Rainbow Warrior bombers.