The Dutch-born 80-year-old was known locally as founder of battery hen farm turned quirky tourist attraction Happy Hens, located 40km northwest of Geelong.

But, unlike the three big hens that were unmissable to Midland Highway travellers, Mr Colla’s true passion was intangible.

Devoutly religious, he was a senior figure within The Order of Saint Charbel, what some say is a doomsday cult founded in the 1980s by William Kamm at Cambewarra, near Nowra, in southern New South Wales.

Mr Colla, who is not accused of any wrongdoing, gave an hour-long sermon at the Order’s Easter retreat at its Cambewarra base in 2005.

He had ordained as a “bishop” in 2004 and his Easter Saturday speech was bookended by preachings from the “Little Pebble”, as Kamm liked to call himself.

Having grown up in a “pious” part of South Holland during World War II, Mr Colla said his first visit to Cambewarra was akin to a homecoming.

“I felt comfortable in this prayerful atmosphere,” he said.

“It helped me to recapture the habit that I had as a child, to walk or to talk to God on a minute by minute basis.”

Mr Colla, his wife Maria, and brother Vincent were the only Meredith members of the Order.

Guido and Maria were in their 60th year of marriage upon his June 15 death that came after a long illness.

The trio would commence prayers at 6.15am each day in a chapel on site at Happy Hens, Mr Colla told the Cambewarra crowd.

“We do not emerge from the chapel again to 7.45am,” he said.

“It is a time to be absorbed with God, with community prayers and Holy Mass.

“We’re in the right spirit, the Holy Spirit so to speak.

“In this way we set the correct mood for the day and every action of ours is dedicated to him.”

The Kamm connection

Kamm, who is in his 70s, is a German-born Catholic who founded the Order after moving to Australia.

He once met Pope John Paul II during a pilgrimage to Rome and told his flock that the Virgin Mary would appear before him on the 13th of each month.

It was the Virgin Mary who anointed him Little Pebble and told him to repopulate the earth, he claimed.

Around 200 followers lived at the Cambewarra compound, surrounded by barbed wire fences, in preparation for the apocalypse.

Mr Colla gave his first confession to Malcolm Broussard, a Kamm loyalist and a former Catholic priest who was excommunicated after he tried to make himself a bishop without the Pope’s permission.

“Something happened that to this day I cannot explain,” Mr Colla recalled in 2005.

“So many things tumbled out of my soul, things that had passed out of my memory for 30 or more years.

“(It was) a freedom I had not felt since my childhood.”

Around the same time the Collas purchased their Meredith egg farm in the mid-1980s, they became involved with the Order.

Mrs Colla, speaking to the Addy this week, said the couple, who had 11 children, learnt of it through their involvement in the Catholic Church.

She said they had been Catholic “forever” and called their marriage a “divine appointment”.

“Buses used to go and see him (Kamm) and everything else like that and we went and saw it one time, and go, okay, whatever,” she said.

“Hey, we just say, if you pray, you pray, and pray is all the same.”

It was Kamm’s teachings about “becoming closer to God” that attracted her to the Order, which she viewed as a “prayer group”.

“He talked about the same as what we talk about now, what with Donald Trump and stuff like this,” she said.

“There’s going to be a change coming in this world.”

Mrs Colla said they remained members of the Order up until her husband’s death.

“(I’m involved) very, very loosely at the moment, especially now I’m on my own,” she said.

Claire McAuliffe grew up in the small town of Lal Lal, near Meredith, in a different religious sect – Society of Saint Pius X.

She later married a man who joined the Order and moved to Cambewarra at the age of 27.

The mum of eight fled almost a decade later and the now 54-year-old works in social science in Queensland.

She said Happy Hens was “supposedly chosen” by the Virgin Mary as one of the Order’s communities.

“The idea was the community would be self-sufficient, so when the end day came people would live on the property and have their own priest (Guido),” Ms McAuliffe said.

Being a hen farm meant survivors of an apocalypse would have access to food.

Ms McAuliffe said the Collas frequently visited the cult’s NSW headquarters and were in “hook, line and sinker”.

Considering herself “blessed” not to have experienced abuse during her time in the Order, Ms McAuliffe said others were left “traumatised”.

In an article for The Catholic Weekly in March, Professor Bernard Doherty of Charles Sturt University said those who followed Kamm were not gullible “brainwashed” drones of popular stereotypes, but rather pious and serious Catholics.

“It is very easy to dismiss or demean these people, but the more discerning response is to try and understand them,” he wrote.

In May this year, Kamm and his wife, Sandra Costellia, were charged by police after they allegedly told a six-year-old girl she had been “selected to procreate” with the leader in order to “build a new sect”.

Kamm allegedly wrote to the girl while in jail and sent her multiple gifts, which were allegedly passed onto her by Costellia.

Eggs for days

Mr Colla regularly referenced Happy Hens during his 2005 sermon.

He spoke with pride of having completed the construction of a “great big huge new chicken shed” that was “built with our own hands”.

“It’s beautiful, it’s unique in design and has the world’s best features included,” he said.

He spoke of the extreme challenges faced when Newcastle disease hit Happy Hens in the early 2000s.

More than 100,000 chickens were destroyed.

Citing the Old Testament, Mr Colla said the Book of Job then became a reality.

“The very source of our livelihoods, and all our employees, was taken away from us overnight,” he said.

“Our faith, just like Job’s, and confidence in God remained vital and strong.

“We did not for a moment waiver or doubt in God’s wisdom.

“The affirmations from the Blessed Virgin Mary pulled us through this huge drama.

“In hindsight, it seems like it was all a test and, it seems now, we have passed that test with flying colours.

“And just like Job, we were not only given back everything, but more, much, much more.

“We’ll often say to ourselves, it is as if this disaster was the best thing that had ever happened to us.

“It’s not altogether unlike the crucifixion and, afterwards, the resurrection.”

Happy Hens today is an uneasy sight.

Moorabool Valley Eggs, which traded as Happy Hens, entered administration in February 2023 after encountering financial difficulties.

Administrators Cor Cordis sold the company in September to AVGO Eggs.

It is not suggested that AVGO is in any way connected to The Order of Saint Charbel.

In the midst of a bird flu outbreak, farm workers have been replaced by officials in hazmat suits.

Trucks are coming and going, biosecurity waste placed in quarantine and removed, with the only reference to chickens a small painting of one on a red mailbox.

Final farewell

Mr Colla’s funeral, held at St Mary MacKillop Catholic Church in Bannockburn, was attended by about 100 people.

Maria fought back tears as she delivered a touching tribute to her husband.

Their children were in attendance.

This came after Mr Colla, almost 20 years earlier, detailed the division that his devotion to the Order had created.

“We have 11 children with us, and Bishop James (Duffy) assures us we have six more little saints in heaven,” he said at Cambewarra.

“And though the pain of most of our children walking away from the truth, they at the same time walked away from us.

“The majority of our children have walked away from us and we understand what it is like for the Eternal Father when billions and billions of his creations stubbornly continue to walk away from him.

“We can relate to the powerlessness, while leaving people their free will, that we can do nothing for them until they make their first step in reconciliation.

“All we have for them is hope.”

Mrs Colla this week said while their involvement with the Order caused some friction with some of their children, at no point did any of them become estranged.

She said her husband’s last request was for her to be a “happy widow”.

“This doesn’t mean sometimes when I see something I don’t get tears in my eyes, of course I do,” she said.

“At the same time, I believe in angels, they’re supporting me.

“That’s just how God surrounds me with a plan now that I am on my own, I’ve got no idea what it is and he’s not going to tell me.”

Mr Colla was buried at Meredith Cemetery, 8km north of Happy Hens.