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The Guardian
34 minutes ago
- The Guardian
The kindness of strangers: out of the blue, an older woman handed me a well-thumbed book
A couple of years ago, I decided to improve myself physically and mentally. I did that by setting a couple of new year's resolutions. One was to exercise regularly, and the other was to read a book a week. The exercise part didn't go so well because on 1 January, I went for my first walk and stepped on a branch that punctured my leg. But my plan to throw myself into reading was much more successful. Later that year, I was on a long train trip from Sydney to Melbourne with a friend and told him about my reading goal. I was pretty stoked with how well I was going and was excited to talk about it. I didn't think this was particularly interesting chat to anyone else on the train, so I certainly wasn't worried about anyone eavesdropping. But at some point on this journey, an older couple stood up to get off the train. As they walked past, the woman handed me a well-thumbed copy of The Man Who Was Thursday by GK Chesterton. She smiled at me but didn't say anything. Before I had time to process what had happened, she was gone. I didn't even get a chance to say thank you. That was our only interaction on the train and her gift was completely out of the blue, with no pretext and no expectation. It was a simple, quiet gesture of humanity – kindness just for the sake of it. I didn't quite hit my goal of reading a book a week that year, instead maxing out at about 30 books for the year, which was still a lot more than I'd ever read before. But what makes the memory even fonder is that The Man Who Was Thursday went on to become one of my favourite books – it now has pride of place on my bookshelf. That woman on the train had great taste. From making your day to changing your life, we want to hear about chance encounters that have stuck with you. Your contact details are helpful so we can contact you for more information. They will only be seen by the Guardian. Your contact details are helpful so we can contact you for more information. They will only be seen by the Guardian. If you're having trouble using the form click here. Read terms of service here and privacy policy here
The Guardian
34 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Last resort: when the only option left amid Australia's housing crisis is a motel
Blanche is a lot of things: a mother of eight and a grandmother of 10. A viral TikToker. A survivor of family and domestic violence. A former drug user, clean for nearly two years. And she is, for the moment, housed. To the 49-year-old, the two-bedroom community housing she has in Melbourne's west feels palatial. She previously spent seven months living in a hotel room with her youngest son, then aged nine. Before that, they were wrapped in blankets on the street. They spent four years bouncing around. 'I thought having a drug addiction was hard, but being homeless is harder,' she says. Driven by a cost-of-living crisis, exacerbated by growing family violence, and priced out of the private rental market, more parents and their children are experiencing homelessness. New data from Launch Housing shows that a lack of stable long-term housing means more families are being housed in emergency accommodation such as hotels, with average stays now stretching out to 12 weeks. Every year, the organisation supports 230 families in hotel rooms, with stays funded by the Victorian government. It's unclear how many crisis-supported accommodation rooms there are in the state – but Launch runs 11. Blanche and her son lived in one room, sleeping in two beds. 'I wasn't allowed to have any visitors or anything,' she says. 'Only one powerpoint worked at a time, and I got bloody frostbite sores on my toes. We only had one little heater. 'We didn't have cooking facilities. I bought an air-fryer … Once a week, my son and I went to [fast food restaurant] Lord of the Fries and got nuggets for him. 'Like any other homeless person, sometimes we choose between eating and our children.' On Wednesday morning, sitting in her lounge, which also doubles as a bedroom for her daughter and her new grandson, just six weeks old, Blanche was excited. She's taught herself how to use TikTok – a video of her as an AI mermaid has blown up, hitting over 30,000 views. Blanche, who escaped domestic and then family violence, had never had an ID in her life – until last year. As a young girl, she was a ward of the state. She had her first child at 15, after she was abused. She doesn't know how to use a computer. Despite where she's been and what she's experienced, she laughs easily. Sign up: AU Breaking News email Throughout their stay, her son was going to school, but living in a motel followed him into the classroom. 'He suffered at school,' she says. 'Kids are arseholes to homeless children, and his teachers would ask him questions like 'do you sleep with your mother'. He didn't have friends. 'And because I have no teeth, I got judged. It was very hard to get a job.' For some of the stay, Blanche did not have government help to pay the rent, so she worked as a cleaner at the motel where she also lived. For every two hours she cleaned, she would get a $50 discount. Launch's acting group manager for families and new beginnings, Angela Zheng, says fewer than 1% of private rentals are available for families on income support. 'There is also not enough housing out there,' she says. 'There's a lack of community housing, and there are limited options for crisis-supported accommodation. 'So the demand is just growing.' The current homelessness support system was originally set up when single male clients were the main group of people requiring support, which is no longer the case, Zheng says. Last year, over 60% of adult homelessness clients across Australia were women, and more than 75,000 were children under the age of 18. 'We're calling for more crisis-supported accommodation,' she says. 'That means there is support on site. It's often co-located with children's programs, with government services, so it's a kind of a hub that families can link in with.' The Victorian Department of Housing, Homelessness and Fairness, which financially supports the motel stays, spent more than $14m in 2024–25 to place people in emergency accommodation like hotels. 'People are doing it tough right across the country, and that's why we're investing in the support services that help Victorians sleeping rough not just find temporary accommodation but stay in safe and secure long-term housing,' a spokesperson for the department said. 'Each year we invest more than $300m into specialist homelessness services every year, to assist around 100,000 Victorians who are at risk of or experiencing homelessness.' Tyrone is the father of five children. In 2023, he and his wife spent almost three months living in two studio apartments side by side. Their youngest was four, the oldest 17. 'Our most difficult task was trying to make meals,' he says. 'We had one electric saucepan, a kettle and a rice cooker. Lucky I'm a chef – I could kind of wing it.' Over the course of three months, Tyrone watched his kids get more depressed. His wife was home schooling the younger ones, but the older ones had nothing to do. '[They] just watched TV until early hours in the morning and then slept all day,' he says. 'When I came home from work, we would go across to the park. Just to kick the ball and try and get them outside.' The family is now in a private rental, which Tyrone can just afford on his wage. While they're all close, he says the hotel stay affected his family. 'We were stuck in the same room for so long that we … started to have a few little arguments, or tiffs. Those kinds of pressures.' After almost eight months living in the motel, Blanche was connected with Launch Housing's family accommodation program, which looks at finding long-term options. 'My son is traumatised,' she says. 'For the first few months or so, he couldn't sleep with the door closed; he didn't close the shower door … It was hard just to transfer away from me. 'Now I don't see him,' she laughs. 'He's just on his bloody PlayStation.' In her new house, there are bright colours everywhere, with walls covered in tie-dye and Disney characters. 'But none of this feels like mine, or ours,' Blanche says. 'Because it's not … We're still living on the edge.' Blanche and her family have fought – to get clean, for this roof over their heads. She says she didn't ask to be homeless or to be hit by her partner. She has been living in the shallow end of Australia's housing crisis, and is still seeing the impact of it on her son. 'They've got to think of the kids. They've really got to think of the kids.'
The Guardian
34 minutes ago
- The Guardian
One giant leap for bettongs released into sanctuary as wildlife conservancy aims to operate on 5% of Australia
Like a ball of fur mounted on a spring, they leapt into the crisp night air and on to a landscape of acacia scrub where they hadn't roamed free for maybe a 100 years or more. The Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC) last month released 147 of the brush-tailed bettongs on to its sanctuary at Mount Gibson, about a four-hour drive northeast of Perth on the edge of the wheat belt. 'When we open the bag, their first thought is just 'we're outa here',' says Dr Bryony Palmer, a wildlife ecologist at the conservancy. Sign up: AU Breaking News email 'While they're in the air they figure out where they are and then off they go.' The bettongs had been taken from inside an 8,000-hectare fenced 'safe haven' within the sanctuary – away from the teeth of feral cats and foxes – where 162 of them released there in 2015 have now grown to about 1,000. With cats and fox numbers being managed by the conservancy outside the fence, the hope is the bettongs, also known as woylies, will survive and thrive as they once did before Europeans introduced cats and foxes that are prodigious native wildlife killers. From bilbies and numbats to quolls and phascogales, eight threatened native mammal species – all once locally extinct – have successfully been reintroduced over the past decade since the conservancy bought the 130,000 hectare former sheep property in 2000. This week, AWC will reveal an ambitious strategy to expand this kind of project well beyond its already sizeable footprint across the Australian continent. If you add the 6.8m hectares of land AWC owns or partners on purely for conservation to the 6.1m hectares where it works mostly with pastoral companies to improve conservation, 'then that's significant, globally – it's about 1.7% of Australia' the chief executive of AWC, Tim Allard, says. By 2035, the organisation hopes to expand the area where they are carrying out conservation work – either on their own properties or on land being used for other things, such as cattle grazing – to about 5% of Australia's land mass. 'This is about where we want to be. But it's what we think is necessary to secure Australia's natural heritage,' says Allard. Australia's unenviable record on mammal extinctions – the worst in the world – is well known. The federal government has promised no new extinctions and pledged to have 30% of land protected by 2030 – part of a global '30x30' conservation goal. 'On 30 by 30, we have been at pains to say that if that land is not being effectively conserved, then it's all for naught,' says Allard. '30 by 30 is about protecting areas but increasingly we have to think beyond that. About 54% of Australia is managed for pastoralism. We have to find a way to have sheep and cattle and conservation working together.' The 30x 30 target for Australia includes everything listed on a national reserve system and currently 24% of the land is protected in areas like reserves and parks managed by local and state governments, the commonwealth and not-for-profit conservation groups like AWC. To reach its lofty goals, Allard says the organisation wants to grow from its current $40m a year revenue that comes mostly from philanthropy, to a $100m-a-year organisation. The conservancy hopes the new high-profile appointment to its board of former NSW Liberal treasurer Matt Kean, the current chair of the federal government's Climate Change Authority, will help increase its reach and raise more funds. Sign up to Breaking News Australia Get the most important news as it breaks after newsletter promotion 'We're drawing a line in the sand. This plan is the boldest private response to the extinction crisis in our nation's history,' says Allard. 'We have a major challenge in this country with the decline in biodiversity, but we also have a massive opportunity. 'We want to give people some hope. The goal is to grow that philanthropy. Only about 2% of charitable giving in Australia goes to the environment. 'Most of the world's biodiversity is in the southern hemisphere, but most of the money is in the northern hemisphere. We have to find ways to sell Australia internationally.' Back at Mount Gibson, the bettongs released last month are being tracked every two days with the help of radio collars on 20 of them. Palmer is getting ready for the arrival of a team of botanists to survey the sanctuary to see if the re-introduction of the small mammals has started to help more native plants grow. A lot of Australia's smaller mammals are 'ecosystem engineers' that help spread seeds and improve soils with their digging. 'When you walk through the fenced area, there are these little dig holes everywhere with little seedlings growing in them.' Those benefits might be spilling out of the fenced area. 'We've started to get records of the bettongs outside the fence,' says Palmer. 'It's six foot high, but they're good climbers.'
