When the Rajneesh sect moved into Pemberton, it didn’t count on the strength of community
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Rosalind Piper was in her mid-20s, managing the Gloucester Motel in Pemberton in Western Australia, when a well-dressed man walked through the door and asked for her help.
“He said he was looking for his daughter and she’d gone missing,” Ms Piper said.
He’d got word his daughter had joined a spiritual group and had travelled the 330 kilometres from Perth to find her.
“He didn’t know what he was coming to or where.”
It was 1985, and forestry, farming and local footy were the backbone of the close-knit Pemberton community.
All the locals knew each other, and the start and end of each day was marked by a loud whistle from the local timber mill ringing through the town.
Ms Piper had noticed newcomers clad in orange and red, but until this worried father walked through the door, she hadn’t paid them much attention.
These new, brightly dressed people Ms Piper noticed were part of the notorious Rajneesh movement, led by the Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh.
It was not the first or last religious sect to move into Western Australia’s South West.
Read more https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-24/the-orange-people-history-in-pemberton/106473858
Content retrieved from: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-24/the-orange-people-history-in-pemberton/106473858.
