Down-at-heel among the
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 15: Divided Nation
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Peter Meredith
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Peter Meredith's biography and other articles by this writer
The Southern Highlands of New South Wales is a rural region with a reputation for city-style affluence. Most visitors, and a significant number of its residents, see it as the happy hunting ground of the very rich and the ordinarily rich. It's up there with Sydney's Double Bay, Melbourne's South Yarra and Brisbane's Ascot in the status and desirability stakes.
This view has a historical basis. Since 1867, when the railway reached the district, it has been not only a cool-climate tourist destination but also a popular bolthole for those able to afford large country homes and estates among the rolling green hills.
Today, the trappings of affluence are as conspicuous as ever: the multimillion-dollar mansions, the Mercs, the spotless SUVs, the plethora of restaurants, cafes and boutiques, even an offshoot of Jones the Grocer. And while the image all this creates of a wealthy enclave may be unintended, there's no doubt it helps fuel tourism as well as economic and population growth in the district.
But beneath the glitz lies an unacknowledged reality, and you don't have to dig far to find it. Tucked away out of sight in the three main towns – Bowral, Mittagong, Moss Vale – and some of the outlying villages are areas of housing that resemble down-at-heel big-city suburbs. Here live people who have been stricken by a whole Pandora's box of misfortunes, from illness to domestic violence, that have forced them into hardship. More difficult to spot, but prevalent nonetheless, are what might be termed the genteel poor, people who have known better times but who now suffer unseen behind closed doors. And, like any inner-city zone, the district has its share of vagrants and substance-abusers.
In 2006, geographer Ian Bowie lifted the lid, if only a little, on poverty in the district. In his book, Wingecarribee Our Home (U3A Southern Highlands/Wingecarribee Shire Council, 2006) he uses statistics from numerous sources, including the 2001 census, to paint a portrait of the Southern Highlands that demolishes long-held myths.
Some figures stand out. One is that a third of households reported incomes below the Henderson Poverty Line for the average family. Others are that more than 40 per cent of individual incomes were below the poverty line for a single adult and three-quarters were below the median average weekly ordinary full-time earnings level, which in 2001 was $700.
Bowie warned that these were slippery figures, but behind the statistical fog lie a few solid rocks: "Thirty per cent of standard households under the poverty line suggests there's got to be very real poverty here."
Another revelation (although again the figures are slippery) was that there were very few people who could be termed truly rich. At the time of the 2001 census, there may have been as few as 1,250 people with incomes of more than twice the median average.
"So the perception of this part of the world being rich, affluent, is simply not right," Bowie said.
I set out to find the faces behind the poverty that the statistics alluded to. First I talked with people (individuals as well as the representatives of organisations) dealing with poverty and the poor. They quickly confirmed the message of Bowie's stats – that there were indeed many financially stressed people living amid the affluence. Family counsellor Francine Bartlett added a relevant twist: "Research shows that it's the relative gap between rich and poor that is more destructive than the actual degree of poverty ... People who are poor here actually feel it more acutely because there is relative wealth around them."
Anne-Marie Kennedy, project manager for Interchange Wingecarribee Inc., a non-profit community-based organisation, created a striking picture: "One of my first client visits was to a very elderly woman who had an outside toilet and no sewerage. She just used to dig her waste into the ground. That, juxtaposed with the images of the region of great estates, people playing polo and cashmere jumpers, was bizarre."
Early in my investigations, I hesitated to use the words "poor" and "poverty" for fear that such blunt instruments might hurt or offend. It was easier to crouch behind anodyne and thoroughly correct terms like "strugglers", "battlers", "people doing it tough" and "financially challenged".
But one of the battlers set me right. I'd circulated a carefully worded letter among the clients of one organisation calling for volunteer interviewees. A woman phoned me.
"I hear you're looking for poor people to interview," she said.
I baulked at her directness. "Ah, um, yes, I am indeed after people experiencing financial distress," I said.
"Well, I'm poor. You can interview me."
So I did. Her story and those of a number of other people follow. Just as much as they illustrate the theme of this article, they reveal how unique, rich and astonishing are the lives of all individuals. Even the poor.
The names of interviewees, and the names of the people they mentioned during interview, have been changed.
JAKE, 15: I dropped out of school when I was thirteen after I got arrested for assault with a deadly weapon on my mum. I had ADHD [attention deficit hyperactivity disorder] and bipolar [disorder] and now apparently I'm paranoid-schizophrenic too.
It was my third time getting arrested, but I got let off. The times before it was for the same thing. I dunno why I did it. Just one day she had a go at me and I snapped.
I didn't like school at all. Everyone used to pick on me, maybe because I looked weird and had weird hairstyles and stuff. I've always been different, and I like it like that.
I was living in Wollongong then, with my mum and my sisters. My dad had left and was up here. I have four sisters, no brothers. My father had me and my older sister; two of my other sisters were by a different dad and the third one was a by different dad again.
I got into drugs when I was ten. My first smoke was when I was ten and my first cone was when I was ten. Same day. I've tried a knock-off version of acid; I've had ice, speed, heroin (only a little bit – when I bought pot laced with heroin), and a couple of home-made things and mushrooms. I like pot, but the rest, well ...
After I got arrested and let off, I came up here to live with my dad on a farm. He used to be a biker and was a maintenance fitter, a mechanic, and used to fix machines for big companies and do up old cars and sell 'em. He stopped work six or seven years ago when he had his first heart attack. After that he got really sick and fat and had more heart attacks and was on a pension.
Up here it was just me and him in an old run-down cottage with rats the size of cats. There was another house on the property, which belonged to the owner, my dad's friend who was eighty-six, and there was a farmhand. That's all the people there was on the property. And it was about a thousand acres.
On the property I helped my dad out. I grew a real massive garden with all different herbs like oregano, and vegetables. That's all I did most of the day, or I just watched TV. Well, as much as I could on the black-and-white TV attached to a battery. We had no power, see, and no hot water in the cottage. For showers we had solar hot water bags we put in the sun on top of the bathroom.
There was power in the shed, which was a kilometre down a driveway. We were allowed to put a fridge and microwave there. We had a gas stove and me and my dad took turns cooking. Spaghetti Bolognaise, or those Coles heat-'n'-eat lasagnes, or big stir-fries, with chicken, vegetables and rice and stuff. We cooked mad things. I used to cook my own omelettes, two-egg omelettes that were that fat ...
After I moved in with my dad I had no friends at all, no one to talk to except my dad and his friends. It was okay with my dad except when he started hitting me. He did that because I used to be uncontrollable and he couldn't control me so he just hit me and just kept on hitting me and then finding excuses to hit me. He was all right other times. He used to grow pot and smoked it but wouldn't let me.
I got bashed by my dad for about two and a half years. Sometimes I used to run off when he tried to hit me and disappear for like two or three hours and then come back. One day he was bashing me and yelling at me and I just went, "The hell with this" and I started walking and never went back.
I went to the cops and they took me to a refuge and I stayed there about three months. They charged my dad and he was brought to court. I never found out what happened about it. I used to see him sometimes after that. He used to sit out the front of Coles nearly all day. He died two months ago of a heart attack at the age of forty-six and I ended up with his bong, but I got rid of it.
I got kicked out of the refuge three times, got suspended. The last time was for attacking one of the staff while I was speeding off my head. I got very violent, threw a chair.
I left, stayed in a friend's house for one night, lived at another friend's for two weeks and then I was in Goulburn for four months. I got a job working trolleys, but I got sacked for swearing. I had a couple of other jobs and I was getting my life right and then a couple of kids across the road, all pot-smokers, got me in trouble and I got arrested for shoplifting, which I didn't do – I did it for someone else.
Then I came back up here. Been living here about a month now. I've been happy ever since. I live at a house with a couple of friends. I just pay $50 a week rent and buy a bit of food and my own smokes. The money comes from Centrelink, $170 a week, and I take the rent out of that. And I'm looking for a job.
Haven't been getting myself in too much trouble. Well, a little bit but not much. Like buying pot off a dealer. Also I was doing favours for people, running drugs to other people and selling them. I was getting free pot for that.
I don't really know where I go from here. Probably end up dead soon or ... I dunno. I'll try and get a job doing fireworks, letting off fireworks for people or blowing stuff up for the army. Sounds like fun.
My other job was going to be drug dealing but I got out of that one 'cos I've done it before. When I was thirteen I used to grow pot and sell it. If you can grow tomatoes you can grow pot. It's that easy. Just plant the seed, get the right fertiliser, the right light, or outside, though I grew it better as a hydro set-up.
I used to draw. I keep all the pictures. But I can draw excellent like. I make weird characters, like weird devils and goats and different creatures and evil symbols like upside-down crosses. I drew a grim reaper on a motorbike once. I actually sold one of me pictures to someone for $300. It was just a pencil drawing.
There's tons of kids living like me. Most ain't as young as me. I stopped hanging around with younger kids 'cos I know a bit more about drugs and shit than them. So I hang around with older people that just relax and smoke cones all day.
You're better off not even starting into drugs. Try it, and if you like it, keep going with it, but don't get yourself in trouble with it. You always have to be in control of the drugs; the drugs can't be in control of you. I used to think that it was in control of me. I'd rather have just a little bit occasionally, otherwise I'm too hyperactive. That's why I started smoking in the first place.