Annette Sharp: Friends puzzled by guru’s spell over ‘besotted’ Deb Hutton

Deborah Hutton’s enduring relationship with self-described teacher, mentor, life coach and Vedic practitioner Andrew ‘Marshie’ Marsh is worrying her friends, writes Annette Sharp.

Deborah Hutton’s enduring relationship with self-described teacher, mentor, life coach and Vedic practitioner Andrew “Marshie” Marsh continues — and it is worrying friends of the “besotted” brand ambassador.

Almost a year after the pair were first photographed holding hands together in Sydney, their unlikely relationship endures, even as Marsh’s meditation business is on hold pending court proceedings against the yogi who will face two common assault charges when his case returns to court in August. Marsh has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Deborah Hutton with Andrew ‘Marshie’ Marsh at Easter. Picture: Jonathan Ng

Hutton’s attachment to Marsh, with whom she was photographed in a cosy embrace at her Sydney home two weeks ago, puzzles even her closest friends, including some who championed Hutton when she emerged from her decade-long relationship with her father-figure partner and manager Harry M. Miller two decades ago.

In Marsh, the meditation mystic with whom she forged a special bond during an Indian pilgrimage in 2019, Hutton found a man she has since described as a “healer”.

According to reports, Hutton confided to the couple’s 2019 Indian tour group that she and Marsh were lovers in a “past life”.

In Eastern culture, the spiritual healer promises release from “ego” on the path to universal enlightenment, inner peace, self-realisation and sexual release.

On Marsh’s meditation website, he uses similar language, though sex isn’t referenced, when inviting prospective students to join him on a quest for “true happiness”. (A quest, that in Marsh’s case, does not necessarily prohibit drugs, given his guilty plea, in December, to cocaine possession).

Such a guru, in modern Indian culture, is called a “god-man”.

It is this term that now raises concerns with some of Hutton’s friends.

Gretel Packer and astrologer Shane Murray in 2000, not long after they met.

On his website Marsh, a former winemaker, admits to a zealot-like rebirth after early years spent recklessly and indulgently.

Hutton, who turns 60 this year, “seems to be looking for something” one friend said
last week.

“Maybe it is spiritual meaning but perhaps she should be looking more widely for it now, particularly given the events of recent months,” they said.

Hutton isn’t the first smart, financially well-off Sydney woman to fall for the charms of an Aussie bloke, beach-styled mystic.

Philanthropist and heiress Gretel Packer was dazzled by an astrologer 10-years her senior in 1999 while on the rebound from the breakdown of her first marriage to British financier Nick Barham, the father of her two eldest children Francesca and Ben.

The shy billionairess-to-be first met hippie and yoga teacher Shane Murray in an Avalon cafe.

Prior to his relationship with Packer, Murray had been involved with two sisters, one of whom confided to this writer in 1999 (producing pictures as evidence) that Murray was something of a sex god in the sack.

Packer, whose relationship with Murray would last six years and produce one child, had long tried to please her generous but often absent and domineering father Kerry.

In the hippie astrologer she may have enjoyed a rebellion against daddy, but it was one that would ultimately cost her financially after she married Murray and the union foundered after a year, leading to a drawn-out settlement that could not have come cheaply.

Though struggling when he first met the Packer heiress, Murray is understood to be living comfortably these days — despite the fact that material possessions are generally not prized in Eastern mysticism.

Author and New Zealander Mary Garden was more forthcoming about the seductive appeal of the Eastern mystic in her book, The Serpent Rising, which was based on her experiences in
the ’70s.

As she said in interview last year, the key to finding enlightenment in Eastern philosophy, is finding your “real guru” or “true master”.

“The guru in Hinduism … was actually considered greater than god because the guru was the vehicle to enlightenment,” Garden explained.

“What’s important is to find a guru and surrender … Many of us quite intelligent people got caught up in his because obviously there was something lacking in our life … and maybe many of us had traumatic childhoods that made us more susceptible.”