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More than 105,000 Australians belong to The Invisible City, says Tess Lawrence, and some of them may be people you know.
by contributing editor-at-large Tess Lawrence
Many Australians and tourists may not have heard of The Invisible City.
And yet it has more people than the cities of Bendigo, Burnie, Ballarat, Bunbury or Bundaberg.
The Invisible City has no infrastructure. It exists without political representation.
Unlike the Great Wall of China, it cannot be seen from outer space.
It has no post code.
It has no telephone prefix.
All roads lead to it. Few roads lead from it.
The Melways doesn’t even list The Invisible City as a dead end. Nor does Gregory’s list it as a cul de sac.
Your GPS will bombard the satellite, but to no avail.
The Invisible City does exist outside of the walls of our imagination.
It is no stately pleasure dome; no Xanadu.
The Invisible City is without borders of any kind. You need no Passport. No Visa. No ID.
You are free to visit and to come and go at any time of your choosing — or to forever stay.
The people of The Invisible City are drawn from all walks of life, religion and ethnic origin.
It is multi-lingual.
It does not discriminate by gender or sexual preferences, or ‘marital status’
There are singles, couples, families with children and babies, preteens, teenagers, groups, gangs and tribes, urban, suburban, city and people from regional and outback Australia.
Wealth is no less an impediment than poverty.
Or age.
More than 105,000 Australians belong to The Invisible City.
In Australia, like its many Sister Cities throughout the world, The Invisible City has a diaspora throughout this wondrous continent and its islands.
Many Australians will have heard of the people from The Invisible City, and many of them will be related to us even if we no longer relate to them.
The homeless are the people of The Invisible City.
They are our homeless children, our sisters and brothers, our nieces and nephews, our mothers and fathers and yes, our grandads, nans and nonnas.
They are us and we are them.
If you think being homeless will never happen to you, think again. No-one is exempt from the vicissitudes of life.
Surely we have learned that by now.
Tonight, St Vincent de Paul will put on their annual CEO Sleepout.
This is more than a one night stand with the homeless.
And it’s not a quick fix to salve the conscience.
The CEOs and all who participate and sponsor them, draw widespread public attention to the realities and rigours of the daily existence of our homeless people.
Many of the executives who initially get involved with this project — stay involved.
Yesterday, I got an email from Malcolm Turnbull’s office and he has used his nouse and mailing list to call for sponsors for tonight’s Sleepout.
Malcolm Turnbull
So, I’m making a humanitarian – and not a political – endorsement of Turnbull.
Independent Australia is doing what we can in our own way – and that is to lend support to St Vinnies for the fab and non-judgemental work they do — and to support Malcolm and/or any other participants in the CEO Sleepout.
The thing is that participants will be able to pack up and go home to a warm bed after the open-air sleepover.
But for tens of thousands of us, we have to find another bridge to sleep under, another dumpster to crawl into, another derelict place in which to squat— as well as deal with all the awful issues impacting upon our lives.
If we have not love in our hearts for homeless strangers, let us find compassion.
If we cannot condone their lives, let us not judge.
If we are frightened or disgusted of such people, let us help fund those who are not — such as Vinnies
If we feel we are hopeless and cannot make any difference to the lives of others, then at least support those who are more optimistic of the human spirit and the capacity of the individual to change their lives around.
There are thousands of us who still cannot call Australia home. And many who never will.
But it is true that there but for the grace of your god and the godless, go you.
And most certainly, I.
Re: Tess, Please Help Australia’s Homeless Get Through Winter
| Dear Tess,Sydney’s inner city houses some of the richest and poorest members of our community, often living within metres of each other.Tomorrow night [Ed: tonight] I will take part in the Vinnies CEO sleepout — an opportunity to better understand the daily struggle that the homeless face and their battle to maintain dignity in our city.
Please Donate by Clicking Here That battle would be much harder if it were not for the amazing work that a handful of charities do, among them the St Vincent de Paul Society. I would encourage everyone to visit their website here and donate to this important cause. |
|
| Yours sincerely,Malcolm Turnbull |
6 Comments
Dear TESS, you may be pint-sized but you have the heart of a lion.
I remember my mother quoting to me once as a child after an epic bout of whingeing those sobering words of Kipling’s: “I cried because I had no shoes until I saw a man who had no feet”.
Dear SANDI,thank you so much for your comment, isn’t it wonderful that you still carry your Mother’s words so close and that those words clearly have influenced your fearless advocacy for Planet Earth.
And didn’t Kipling’s son go missing during the War and poor Kipling, like millions of other parents,just couldn’t live with the thought and time and again tried to find his son – who had in fac been killed – and if I recall rightly, also tried to contact him via a spirit medium?
Dear TESS,
I would have posted earlier, but my computer “got fried” a few hours before you posted this article, so I was off air for a day or two.
I chalked up something of a personal milestone, twice, in the last couple of days – I slept on my back again — first time since 1998. During all the years we were homeless (and semi ‘ on the run’), we slept on concrete, on rocks, on hard ground, usually because we had to hide in places where we were not likely to be found. That ended a few years ago for us, but somehow my body remembered. On rocky and hard ground, we could never sleep on our backs, so we had to sleep on our sides, or on our faces. Same for sleeping in cars – we could never stretch out, so we always slept on our sides. In all the years since (until this week), my body could never “adjust back”.
The emotional impact of being homeless, and trying to protect your child out in the open, especially with govt thugs stalking you, is almost impossible to convey or do justice to, in words. All of that happened to us, and happened in a foreign country where we knew no-one, because I tried to save Australian lives. It makes me very conscious of how wonderful a cause you, and Malcolm Turnbull are promoting.
[On a lighter note, the source of my computer fry was some special software directed at my computer from a group in Melbourne -- it looks like some of the material I swapped with you, and with MATT N, got a reaction, despite going over most of the readership's heads.
In the past, a software attack was the usual preliminary to a home invasion or a shooting, so I will wisely desist from adding any more info re events in 2001-2002.
When the snipers were sent after us in 2003, and they refused to carry out orders, for which they were gaoled, there was a cover-up. The MP who organised the cover-up had an explosion of her own a few years later - when a major earthquake went off under her electorate.
Co-incidence or not, I laughingly wondered if I had some sort of guardian angel who "returned serve" at the guys in Melbourne with another earthquake a few hours after they zapped my computer.]
But, getting back to the homeless, a BIG THANK YOU for what you are doing — we got to know, and lived among many homeless people for several years — they often have no voice, no power, and get bullied and hassled by bureaucrats and local councils — and the community often blames the victim, rather than the cause (eg banks that dispossess people of everything).
XX
Dear TERRA AUSTRALIS, how strange, mine too. Re computers. Quite serious.
I really do have some understanding of what it must have been like for you and your daughter – and very much thinking of you as a parent whose activities have had an impact upon your own child.
You have certainly had some hard calls to make T.A.
St Vinnies and other similar groups realy put in the hard yards on behalf of us all.
They do what some of us can’t do and what some of us don’t want to do and despite the fact that some of us couldn’t care less what anyone does or doesn’t do.
Like you I know some homeless people. And people who seem homeless not only in body, but in mind and soul.
Then again, I know people who live in mansions and they would say they feel homeless is so many other ways.
Dear T.A. it is good that we can chat about things with one another
and share experiences and thoughts.
Yes, St Vinnies are superb — they are something good to come out of Catholicism. (There has been more than a ton of bad stuff, pretty obviously, as demonstrated by the reaction to the Cardinal Pell article on the IA website.)
[When I was in the US in 1998, there was a bumper sticker doing the rounds, which had the old RC church rather upset. The sticker read:
“I survived Catholic School!”
Dear TERRA AUSTRALIS, hear,hear re St Vinnies, the Brotherhood of St Laurence and the Dear Salvos – and other groups, including non-religious groups who are lesser known.