Freemasonry is just a curious joke to us, isn't it. secret handshake ha ha ha, conspiracy of the pyramid on the american dollar bill, redneck old men wearing antlers et cetera. It's ludicrous and sensational like an X-files script but without the sexual tension.
In reality, the Brotherhoods of noughties Sydney are a lot more dowdy and suburban than that. All those Freemason offshoot organisations that splintered off centuries ago today aren't even masons anymore, but are now a hundred different 'secret societies' operating under completely different names. Their offices and halls dotted throughout our suburbs don't have any of those cliched set-square-and-protractor logos hanging conspicuously out the front. You wouldn't even know they were there. Maybe the hardcore old-school crew are still secretly controlling governments and getting cities town-planned to their own sinister layout of a pyramid, a pentagram and some kind of stick-figure rabbit. (check out their success with Washington).
But I don't know what these newfangled secret societies do. I didn't even know there WERE new ones at all, until this one day a few years ago.
It was a day, a day like any other, oh yes. But fate, or maybe intelligent design, intervened to steer my course past the headquarters of R.A.O.B.G.A.B. I don't think this building wanted to be noticed; I think it tries very hard to stay off everyone’s radar. But the acronym on the side of the metal awning emitted a strange pull and once I noticed it I couldn't look away.
R.A.O.B.G.A.B. Just the arrangement of those letters suggests the Raelian religious sect or U.F.Os. Say it out loud and it sounds like a record being played backwards. What could it stand for? Royal Australian Order of… uh… Beautiful Gardens and Amateur Birdwatching? The sinister aura of the place told me it wasn't so innocent.
R.A.O.B.G.A.B is located on a broken-glass-littered stretch of cracked concrete footpath on Parramatta Road, Granville, with car yards either side. The footpath is not really there to be walked on, a shadeless gruelling battle zone alongside six lanes of fuming traffic. But these hostile surroundings are perfect protection for R.A.O.B.G.A.B.

Peering through the windows, the office interior not only looks like it hasn’t been touched since the 1970s, it looks like it hasn’t been touched AT ALL. The flawless bronze strips across the receptionist desk glass, the perfectly placed orange circular plant tubs with immaculate miniature palm trees, and the brown velour chairs hunkering in the corners all look like they were placed yesterday... if yesterday were 30 years ago.
It was obviously a front. The whole thing reeked of aliens.
I pondered it for a year and a half before uncovering the bizarre truth.