Cooleroo Hall

Twelve-year-old Branimir Hendovich wins a scholarship to an exclusive private school housed in Adelaide’s Cooleroo Hall, the sprawling 19th century mansion built by the pastoralist Shadforth Throgmorton.

The Zadokites, the secretive religious order which runs the school, practice a cult invented by Throgmorton in the decades before his death in 1912. Augurs read the entrails of animals slaughtered at school assemblies. Eunuchs preach a medieval code of sexual abstinence, as they scheme amongst themselves in bitter factional rivalries. Devout pupils volunteer for a lifetime of seclusion at the Zadokites' hermitage, never to be seen again. The sodalities, prayer-groups under the control of the eunuchs, police this inward-looking suburban empire with thuggish brutality.

In his final year at the College, Hendovich witnesses a disturbing ritual in the temple beneath the Hall. His exposure of the practices of the Zadokites leads to the closure of the school in a blaze of scandal in 1981, and the subsequent ruin of the Hall.

Hendovich is unable to escape the consequences of his involvement with the Zadokites. In an attempt to make sense of his part in the dereliction of the Hall, in adult life he investigates the history of Cooleroo, from its days as an aboriginal sacred site, through its settlement in the colonial era, to its seven decades under the Zadokite yoke.

Fully aware of the fate of many of her former denizens, in the new millennium Hendovich founds an idealistic counter-culture community in the abandoned Hall. This book documents his struggle with the troubled legacy of Cooleroo.