From the right side and the back of a boys’ preparatory school (called Sternmaw Prep) in the Sydney’s North Shore suburb of Killara in Australia extended a large and largely unexplored forest. On the side of the school was a little used public garden reserve called Swain Gardens, which had many paths and gardens over a number of levels. Some of the paths led to a tunnelled stream, which flowed towards the border of the Swain Gardens and the forest. The school, unbeknownst to its teachers and students, was situated in a unique part of the world. For this forest, by 1973, was the only place in the world where one could, if one looked hard enough, find all four of the phenomena which had affected various people in centuries past:

(1)  At the point where the school and the forest and the Swain Gardens all met, just beyond the back wire fence and its gate, was a large patch of bamboo. Most boys never played in the bamboo, preferring to use morning tea and lunch time to run about in the playground or in the forest. Of the few boys who did venture into the bamboo and discover a constant natural pool of water, it was unlikely that any would drink from it and discover its reducing properties.

(2)  Somewhere deeper into the forest was a growth water pool, which so far had not been discovered either.

(3)  Elsewhere in the forest was a hole which led to a Wonderland entry room, stocked in some way by the Wonderland cake and water.

(4)  In the depths of the forest furthest from the school was a beanstalk, which led up into the sky, invisible above the level of the treetops to all but those who were climbing it. The beanstalk came out in a giant garden bed on the outskirts of a girls school which had been presided over by Headmistress Louise Grande a long time ago. If one walked through the garden bed in the direction of the school, one came out on its outer lawn. If one walked in the other direction, one came out at the top of the hillside behind the school.

It was the May school holidays of 1974. A boy named Kim Bathewhite, who was only two months away from turning six, was staying a few days at his grandmother’s place, and walked out into the garden to play for a while. He looked through the bushes that separated his grandmother’s place not from the one beside it, but from the one two houses away, which had a small battle-axe section of back garden that met with his grandmother’s place. He noticed that a lady was moving into the house. She watched the moving men carry the last few items into the house, and then paid them. She was tall and had long blonde hair. For the first time in his young life, Kim had something which he did not understand: a crush on a lady. All he could think of was going to see her.