Australia was very much in the headlines in Africa one day in the middle 1950s when a middle-aged couple from New South Wales tried to persuade the world that we human beings all have a mysterious ability to read each other’s thoughts.

I happened to be among a small audience in Africa on that particular day to witness Lesley Piddington read her husband’s mind while the two of them were 1,600 metres apart at either end of what was then the deepest gold mine shaft on the planet near the bustling city of Johannesburg.

Lesley was at the very bottom of the mine shaft with a small coterie of witnesses while her husband, Sydney, was up at ground level, above what was the richest and internationally famous Crown Mines gold reef in the heart of South Africa.

As a journalist and foreign correspondent in the area at the time I had been invited to join Lesley in the bowels of a mine that was successfully extracting gold at a level actually below sea-level.

In our presence as official witnesses, we were challenged to try and understand — and even possibly unravel — how the Australian couple could communicate with each other without a single spoken word being uttered between them.

At a pre-determined and appointed time, Sydney asked one of the mine executives in attendance with him to write a random sentence on paper and to give it to him only while not disclosing to others what he had written. The sentence was then placed in a sealed envelope.

Meanwhile, accompanying Lesley as I and other witnesses did, I heard her slowly utter a sentence, supposedly a copy of the words secretly contained in the envelope so many metres above where we stood over the deepest man-made tunnel into the earth’s crust.

When Lesley and our party of witnesses were eventually shepherded back to ground level by a series of rattling mine lifts, I could not believe my ears when the envelope was opened, and the secret words written by a supposed stranger to the Piddingtons was revealed.

In general terms, Lesley had basically repeated the gist of the written sentence which had been hurriedly placed in the envelope without anyone, other than the invited writer and Sydney, seeing it.

As a possibly cynical newsman, my immediate reaction was to immediately doubt the very veracity of the situation. I could not believe my ears and eyes.

I immediately and repeatedly asked myself in utter amazement whether what I had witnessed was a genuine and successful illustration of two people being able to practise the little understood magical art of mentalism or was it a clever fraud and merely an aspect of amazing showbiz?

For the past 68 years, that mind befuzzling experience I had with the two very connected Piddingtons from Australia down the world’s deepest mineshaft has stayed with me for ever as a complete mystery in my mind.

Some magicians and scientists have over the years attempted to pour cold water on the Pidddingtons and their various other mind reading exploits in different countries — but always without success.

I like to think, however, that they were genuine and had come across the secret of mindful connectedness between two people. After all, I have continuously reasoned, most of us have had experiences where we suddenly think of an old friend we have not seen for years and then hear from that person soon after.

In those days of yore, Lesley and Sydney Piddington were known as the two Australians who gave the world the most famous telepathy and mentalism acts of modern times.

They never revealed how they managed to convey messages between their minds, irrespective of how far away they were from each other. All they would say when questioned on this supposedly canny ability was that they did not believe they possessed paranormal powers of togetherness and thought.

Several magicians active at the time are reported to have speculated on how Lesley and Sydney may have been utilising miniature radio receivers and the smallest of hearing aids hidden on their bodies.

No one, however, ever found out the Piddington’s great secret in spite of their many performances in England and elsewhere.

At one time, they worked with the BBC in London on a series of radio programmes involving, for instance, Lesley being submerged in a diving bell at the bottom of a deep pool of water. She was also held under armed guard at the Tower of London and was able to tell Sydney in the BBC studios some distance away details concerning the people around him.

On yet another occasion, she was sent on a trip by air and managed to successfully read Sydney’s mind, just as she did that day in my presence at the bottom of the gold mine in Johannesburg.

All I have ever been able to find out about Sydney is that he was taken prisoner by the Japanese as a serviceman during WWll. While being held at the infamous Changi P.O.W. camp in Singapore it is said he experimented with aspects of telepathy and showmanship.

He sadly died in 1991 and took his big secret with him. Lesley, on the other hand, always claimed that she never knew just how her husband was able to implant thoughts into her mind.