Category: Uncategorized
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CHRISTMAS AT MUSGRAVE PARK
The time leading up to Christmas is a strange time when you are active in homelessness support. Every year I receive messages from people who have never interacted with humans experiencing homelessness but who want to help them on Christmas Day. I usually refer them to the major charities who all offer Christmas lunches to…
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Don’t hate the player!
Don’t hate the player, hate the game! This is Catherine’s favourite line when she has somehow gained, or thinks she has gained, the upper hand in one of our numerous lively debates. It irritates me for two reasons; she thinks it’s funny, and her last name is Player. Yesterday, once again, I observed this phrase…
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It’s Christmas Time
YES! Santa is checking his suit, Christmas presents are being wrapped and support services, businesses and individual volunteers are getting ready to join us in under two weeks to celebrate Christmas with our homeless and others in need. Christmas time has started! We have been working on this event for a while now, and although…
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The new trifecta in Australian living standards
When I finally left the forest, it took me a year, or so, of sobering up to feel adequately well enough to commence my education. The tertiary preparation course that I embarked on was quite the journey. I really hadn’t had much of an education before it, and I was truly beginning from the bottom…
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Those we Forgot
I went to the Remembrance Day Service, yesterday, at ANZAC Square in Brisbane. There were a lot of people, uniformed, ununiformed, dignitaries, young and old. They all looked dapper, dressed for the solemn occasion. But then I went for a walk, and my thoughts travelled back to Remembrance Day a few years ago. Like today,…
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Surrender, Pants and All
The most amazing things can happen when you choose to surrender.
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Don’t weaponize The Wiggles
The Wiggles are great! William and I watch them daily, on repeat. He loves the bright colours, crazy characters and the litany of catchy tunes, albeit, over and over again. Being 15 months old, he seldom tires of seeing the same skits. He soaks it all in with his big brown eyes open wide until…
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Nick's Story
This particular part of my story starts, appropriately enough, in a public toilet. I’d been ‘living’, in a biological sense at least, on the beach at Kirra in the Gold Coast. A long stretch of the beach is sheltered from the road that runs by it, by a line of shrubbery and hedge. Desperate and…
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Chambers of the Heart
“Home is where the heart is” – the words roll off the tongue easily enough. I’d heard them spoken many times over the years, but as a long-term homeless man I never really knew what to make of them. For most of my life, I’d considered the notion that ahome might resemble a heart as…
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Signal Flare
You may or may not know that Signal Flare grew from very humble beginnings. It all began with the Pie and Cokes that Grant the Polite Guy had with other homeless people when he was homeless himself. He invited another homeless person to have something to eat with him saying he didn’t want to eat…
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Angry young terrorist in the making
For a nation of immigrants Australia sure seems to spend a lot of time demonising immigrants. I wonder what the cost of that might end up being and if it will ever be a thing of the past. Of course, not all Australians hold anti-migrant views, but there are enough out there to ensure an…
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The Big Issue
There are few worse ways to be woken up than with a kick in the face. Maybe getting your ribs stomped on, or having a police baton rammed into your kidneys, or copping a jet of freezing water in your eyes. Those are all pretty ordinary, but I reckon a kick in the face wins…
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The Park Bench Moment
“Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter”. Izaak Walton Everyone has a story to tell, please feel free to share yours by leaving a comment. Travelling with Dr Gregory Smith (or Dr G as we started to cheekily call him), for an eight-venue roadshow event for thousands of jobseekers in Northern NSW…
Dr Gregory P. Smith OAM 