Homeless in Brisbane (2007)

I woke early and went out onto our third-floor balcony to watch the sun rise over the city. The eastern horizon glowed like hot coals and as I watched it brightened and consumed what remained of the night. Down on the street the traffic thickened and grew noisier while down the hill, out of sight behind a line of trees, the train station came to life, rending the air with brief jagged shrieks, prolonged metallic squeals and the steady hum of diesel engines.

Right below our hotel window, in a narrow park between two busy roads, a large stone-roofed shelter stood supported by three sturdy columns arranged in a single line. They’d need to be sturdy, those columns, because the roof itself, which comprised the main part of the shelter, looked like it could do some serious damage if it were to fall. Surrounded and partially obscured by trees, the shelter stood flush with a path along which early morning joggers bounced their tortured way. As I watched a woman in white shorts and red t-shirt lumbered her way up the track, gasping and breathless as she reached the top, legs plodding heavily, arms dangling and swinging loosely with the motion of her body. It’s a striking fact you never see a smiling jogger. Almost invariably they look glum and wounded, and I suppose it’s true they’d rather be doing anything other than clumping along a busy city street at six in the morning. Like standing on a hotel balcony sipping hot coffee and watching the day begin. Occasionally you come across one who stares at you with an expression of smug satisfaction as he bounds past, regulation jogging shorts, t-shirt, runners and sweatband neatly pressed and multi-coloured in order to announce his presence to passing traffic. You know he feels virtuous and more than a little pleased with himself. Because you’re the one he’s passing and you look like shit. Your suit’s crumpled, your face is flushed, you’re wheezing with the effort of just walking up the hill. Heart attack, he’s saying to himself right before he stumbles on the edge of the gutter and careens into an oncoming bus.

Before long scruffy and disheveled men and women began gathering around the shelter in the park. They came from all directions and arrived mostly alone. Unwashed and tired, they dropped their bags in a communal huddle of luggage and began shouting at each other, laughing and joking, gesturing with their hands. It was obvious they all knew each other. They stayed in close proximity to their belongings, never straying more than a few metres from the growing kit pile. As the morning grew lighter more and more people arrived until eventually about thirty were milling around blathering and stamping the ground and blowing air onto their fingers. All races were represented – Asians, Indigenous, Caucasians, Africans. Though only a few were women. Except for one Asian man who sat a little apart and from time to time dropped to the grass and put himself through a series of intense push-ups, they all seemed to get along.

I was wondering what they were doing there when a white van pulled into a tiny parking area where the two flanks of the park met in a tidy wedge. Close to a dozen people – mostly young, mostly female, all wearing white t-shirts – got out. One of them opened the back of the van to reveal a portable kitchen. At last the group under the shelter melted away from their bags and fashioned a loose line leading towards the kitchen. Bread and cups were distributed. I could see steam hovering over the cups. The cheery voices of the Shelter People and Van People as they mingled together carried across Wickham Terrace and up to my third-floor balcony. This ritual had been going on for a very long time.

One of the Shelter People, a man with a long beard and baseball cap, took his share and headed towards the road, where he sat in the gutter breaking off pieces of bread which he deposited in his lap. Pretty soon a number of ibis, full white bodies and curved black beaks like scythes, had gathered round him and he began feeding them the small chunks of bread. It was a heart-breaking sight seeing this man with nothing share what little he had. The birds moved around him, taking the bread from his outstretched hand, pecking the ground for crumbs.

When he’d finished he sat watching the cars slow down before negotiating the intersection. Every now and then he lifted his foam cup to salute one of the drivers. No-one returned his salute. He went unseen. He was one of the Army of the Invisible. But that didn’t stop him. At intervals, perhaps when he saw a face he liked, he hoisted his cup into the air, drew his head back, smiled.

And then a remarkable thing happened. Commuters on their way to the Transit Centre, men in suits carrying briefcases, women in smart jackets and skirts, began stopping, accepting cups of coffee offered by the Van People, and they began mixing with the Shelter People and talking to them. They all stood in little groups, discussing who knows what, occasionally laughing. And none of them – the commuters, that is – seemed embarrassed to be seen with these ill-dressed sorely-in-need-of-a-wash vagrants.

They must, I thought, pass here every day on their way to work. And perhaps at first they did avert their gaze towards the tops of the trees, towards the tower blocks looming across the other side of the park, towards their wrists. Oh look there. If I don’t hurry I’m going to be late! Then – another perhaps – over time their eyes would occasionally meet, just for a brief second, a flash, which over days or weeks would gradually and tentatively be transformed into a smile, until, fairly certain the Shelter People didn’t actually want anything from them other than recognition – no cash, no food, though that would have helped – they would utter their first hello. Imagine those commuters going home to their wives, their husbands, and saying, ‘They’re not as bad as you think.’ And then one day the first cup of coffee is offered in an outstretched hand.

I looked back at the people distributing the food. It is a noble thing they do, these young. Because I was too high up to read the sign on the van I didn’t know where they were from. But I imagined them to belong to a church of some kind, wordlessly and without complaint ministering to a world which regards them largely with indifference. Yet it’s not just the poor they’re feeding – as if there’s anything ‘just’ about that – they’re also bringing people together. Office clerks, shop assistants, the homeless. In some very small way they’re doing their best to heal a society that some think is irreparably broken.

All this took place directly across the road from not one but two four-star hotels catering to the affluently mobile. Or so we must seem to the people in the park. I remember reading somewhere many years ago that if you have just two hundred dollars in the bank by world standards you’re considered wealthy. Imagine standing in the park gazing across the road at the people dining in the ground-floor restaurants, filling their mouths with food, sending a quarter of it away for disposal. What must we seem like to these . . . But what do you call them in this age when most of a certain type of noun has been relegated to a hushed posterity, made repugnant and therefore uncomfortably redundant by a tiny few? Steinbeck called them tramps and bums. Kerouac called them drifters. What do we call them? What terms can we possibly use that would make them feel any better?