In this two-part interview Esther talks to the Mail about her incredible upbringing in Norway, her parents love and how she came to live in Australia.
Hi Esther, you grew up in Norway and have a very unique family heritage. Can you tell us about that?
My father is Norwegian and my mother is South American and her mother is Indonesian and her mother is Chinese Native Indian and her grandfather is Irish. She said we have family on all the different continents in the world. So when I came here she said, ‘Esther, if you want to add to our bloodline, you’d better marry half an Eskimo and and an Australian. So I didn’t quite do that, but I ended up having a child with a Kiwi instead.
How did your parents meet?
It’s so magical. I wish I had that kind of precision in my life. My mum she always knew her destiny. As a three-year-old her mother would take her around to help the local community, give them medicine, pray for them. So my mum, just like my great grandmother, always had psychic abilities. I have them as well, I have vision and dreams and it comes and goes. When she was nine-years-old her grandmother told her ‘Irene, never marry a man, unless he’s born on the 6th of January 1952 from an Aryan race. When the colony ended, it was a Dutch colony, around ’74 my whole family moved to Holland. She was offered a scholarship to Norway as a physiotherapist. She was the only dark skinned, exotic person. After two years there she joined a scuba diving society and learned how to dive. One night she had a premonition about meeting the man of her life. She called her boss at said, ‘I have to take the day off, because I’m going to meet the man of my life today. I’m going to meet him at the annual scuba diving convention.’ It was 10 or 11 hours away from her. So she drove all day and went to the convention. She told all of her friends, you need to introduce me to people, somewhere here is the man of my future. She talked to all of the guys she was introduced to and it was getting late, it was nine in the evening and just as she was giving up, there was a guy opening the door to the bar where she was standing and he was really handsome, tall, blond, blue eyed and he’s wearing a necklace because he’s a lieutenant in the army, so she flicks the dog tag around and it’s the 6th of January 1952. She was like jackpot. It took two years before they were a couple, but she was persistent, she knew.
Your parents were the founders of one of the first alternative healing centres in Norway. Can you tell us about that?
It was called the Rainbow Centre for Holistic Health and Healing. Back in that time it was kind of unheard of. I grew up there and I grew up around different practitioners. I was really blessed. Both of them have such a unique perspective and skill sets. My father was originally an electrical engineer, he got his education via the army. When he met my mum, he didn’t really feel he was in alignment with his purpose and his dream was always to be a father. My mother was chronically ill and she was told she could never have kids. So, he made it his mission in life to heal her and for her to be able to carry children. He started studying holistic medicine, so he combined his knowledge of frequencies and electronics together with homeopathy and made his own path of frequency medicine. My mum had three children and she is still in really good health still to this day. They were a really beautiful couple working together. He would provide the medicine and she would do physiotherapy.
You moved to Australia in 2009 after studying art and design in Singapore for two years. How did that move come about?
My friend and I went to see a psychic who said I would move to the land of the bears. I said, ‘where is that?’ and she said, ‘well, so the land of the bears is either the Koala bear or the grizzly bear, but your grandmother says it’s not going to be Canada because you don’t like the cold’. So she kind of planted the seed in my mind.
But, I think the biggest reason for coming here was a song. I was walking down the street one day with my housemate who was in performance art and she was very terrified about performing, so I was encouraging her to sing. We were singing Norwegian folk songs walking down the street in harmony and as we were singing people gathered around. I met a man named Sal who became my friend and a while later, he came up to me and said, ‘a little bird told me that you’re trying to get to Australia. I don’t think you know this but I was born and raised in Melbourne. I have an apartment in Chapel Street, it is completely unoccupied you’re welcome to house sit for free, there’s no strings attached, there has been other students staying there before. There is a design school two minutes away called Swinburne and you can stay for as long as you want.’ And it all started with a song.
To be continued in the Mail on Friday, April 5.
