The Teacher’s Pet: Dreamworld
Leaving the dark shadow of his first wife’s disappearance behind, Chris Dawson moved his new bride and two children north to Queensland.
Two years after his first wife Lyn vanished without a trace from Sydney’s northern beaches, Chris Dawson moved his new wife, Joanne Curtis, and his two young children up to Queensland to start a new life.
The couple had married in early 1984 before selling Mr Dawson’s house at Bayview in Sydney, using the proceeds to live mortgage-free in a new home they had built on acreage in Coomera, near the newly-opened theme park Dreamworld.
Mr Dawson’s twin brother Paul, his wife Marilyn and their children had also moved to Queensland, and they lived nearby.
In episode 9 of The Teacher’s Pet, the investigative podcast series examining the disappearance and probable murder of Lyn Dawson, national chief correspondent Hedley Thomas looks in close detail at the lives of the newly married couple in Queensland, and how their relationship began to unravel following their move to Australia’s Sunshine State.
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In 1985, Ms Curtis and Mr Dawson had a baby daughter, Kristen, together.
The same year, Mr Dawson began working as a teacher at Keebra Park High school on the Gold Coast.
Home alone with the children, Ms Curtis found herself isolated and feeling imprisoned at the couple’s large home, which she later referred to as ‘the compound’, located near the newly-opened theme park Dreamworld.
While Mr Dawson was teaching, Ms Curtis sought solace in her friend Karen Cook, a woman with whom she became friends during days spent at Dreamworld where the two mothers would go with their small children.
Interviewed for The Teacher’s Pet, Ms Cook has described Ms Curtis as living like a “Stepford wife”.
In the movie The Stepford Wives, controlling husbands mould their wives into a form of perverse perfection.
Ms Cook recalls her young friend confiding that she was frightened of Mr Dawson, and that “she had to do everything he asked of her or there was trouble in the house.”
“She appeared to have very little freedom,” Ms Cook said.
Meanwhile, at Keebra Park High, Mr Dawson found himself in a school with a strong focus on rugby league, and a robust sense of discipline. Bad behaviour was not tolerated, and a professional boundary existed between teachers and students.
It was an environment very different to the one he had left at Cromer High on Sydney’s northern beaches, where male teachers preyed on students for sex.
Mr Dawson’s twin brother Paul taught at Coombabah High near Dreamworld, and eventually Chris Dawson moved there from Keebra to be closer to his brother.
In 1989, The Australian’s Editor-in-chief Paul Whittaker, then a young journalist for The Courier-Mail, wrote a story for the paper about twins featuring the Dawson brothers at Coombabah.
In the article, the brothers were quoted, saying that it was “great being a twin because you had a friend for life no matter what happened.”
“We love it - we always asked to be in the same classes at school and we have played the same sports together all our lives,” they said.
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Do you know more about this story? Contact thomash@theaustralian.com.au