One of the saddest moments of being homeless was when a friend said: ‘Maybe you should consider getting rid of your dogs.’
The news that I was losing my rental came suddenly during the Covid pandemic and just before Christmas of 2020.
I was grateful to have an old van to move into. It had a narrow bed and some storage space and was certainly better than living in a car. It was cramped but cozy and I quickly learned where all the public toilets were.
I hid the gritty reality of being homeless by pretending I had chosen the lifestyle. I claimed I was on a camping vacation – just going nowhere because I had a part-time job six evenings a week. I had to quit my day job as I could not leave the dogs in the car during the heat of the day.
Finding a place to sleep was no easy choice: there was the duck pond with glaring lights from endless highway traffic, teenagers driving in at all hours, music blaring, shouts ringing out or else I could park in the shadows down by the river with the drug-addicted homeless and mosquitoes, keep the windows wound up and pant along with the dogs in the stifling heat.
Alternatively, there was a free camp just out of town, restricted to one night only or the park in town where police officers were likely to shine a torch on you. The dogs, overprotective in our predicament, always gave us away.
Morning walkers not always friendly
The best spot was at the beach, an hour’s drive away. The pleasure of falling asleep to the sound of the ocean was dashed by my anxiety. What if my alarm doesn’t go off? The early morning walkers would be rapping on the door, confronting me, threatening to report me. For what? Daring to sleep beside the sea.
What really was their problem? Were they angry that I hadn’t paid to be horizontal in my van? If I were sitting up it would be all right to park?
There is not a lot of housework in a van but getting it done could take all day. Making food without even a bench space, cleaning up or washing myself without a sink or water, driving around looking for a public tap to fill a bucket to wash clothes, then driving away, so I could discreetly hang the clothes to dry on a branch, the rearview mirror or over the open door.
You see, a big part of surviving homelessness is to show no signs of homelessness.
I suspect it is the difference in lifestyle that causes the discord, not the lifestyle itself.
If we were all homeless…
The outcast feeling
In time, I began to keep my eyes downcast, so other humans became shadows outside my periphery, silhouettes glancing in at me as I sat in the van behind a flimsy curtain.
As the months rolled by, my nervous tension at being an outcast was messing with my mind.
I was exhausted and grateful for days when I could park in the shade and catch up on sleep, uninterrupted.
When torrential rain pounded the roof and water leaked in, soaking our bedding, I tied down a tarp over the roof. It flapped madly, announcing to the world that we were homeless.
Sharing the truth of my situation with a friend, I was shocked when she said, ‘Maybe you should get rid of your dogs.’
I’d die first. But when Covid left me delirious, I wondered if they might be better off without me. My limbs were weak, my lungs panted for air and days rolled by but I remember crawling across a football oval at night, to toss the ball for the dogs and all of us howling at the moon.
Being homeless is mentally and physically draining. It can be humiliating. It instils a sense of going nowhere. To combat this, I continued working on the book I was writing – no easy task without power to charge my laptop. On a good day, I would park in the shade of the big trees at the library, leaving the dogs snoozing while I typed madly, with my laptop charging.
Gympie goes under water in 2022
I made it through a year of being homeless and then came the floods.
I’d applied for a job I saw advertised on a notice board.
A tall, sophisticated lady met me at the gate to her large property. She gave me a bin and garden tools and left me to weed her sprawling lawn.
An hour later, she came out to check on me. I don’t dilly dally around so I understood why she looked shocked, but then she cried: ‘You’ve dug up half my lawn!’
The wilted weeds flopping out of the bin proved to be her precious buffalo grass.
Hands on hips, she said: ‘I think we should have a cup of tea.’
Nothing like a cup of tea during a garden disaster.
Cynthia proved to be a rather eccentric character. We hit it off over Earl Grey and lemon cake. She was also a writer of screenplays and was currently working on a novel.
When she learned I was living in my van, she offered me lodgings in her horse paddock.
I was so relieved, I drove straight to the camping store and bought a truly awesome tent, a two-burner gas stove, a small yellow gas bottle and a single mattress.
I set to work raking and leveling and soon settled into my campsite in the horse paddock by a railway track. I grew up near a railway track, so slept peacefully.
A couple of retired racehorses woke me in the morning. My dog, Fred, was thrilled! He spent the day with them while Loopy hung out with a herd of hens – mostly dust bathing.
I did my washing in my bucket.
I didn’t mind at all when train drivers honked and passengers goggled. My head was buried in the grass and life was looking up for me.
I was still homeless, but I had a tent to live in and could charge my laptop in Cynthia’s garage.
One windy day, clumps of hairy caterpillar were swept onto the ground and the tent.
Foreigners worry about sharks, crocs, killer spiders, snakes, and blue ringed octopus – but the only creature on earth I am terrified of – is the hairy caterpillar.
I was careful to zip the fly screen and carry a torch at night. But in the wee hours one morning, they got me.
My body swelled with itchy raised welts and when I could no longer cope with the pain, I ran fast to the pool just outside the Cynthia’s bedroom window and dived in.
The lights came on.
I ducked under water and when I came up for air, there she was: standing with two glasses of orange juice.
I do love eccentric people.
We established a routine of meeting for morning tea in one of the many garden settings tucked into shady alcoves in her magnificent gardens and I began to dress up for these occasions to match her elegance. I never did look as fine as my host but I was once again an approved member of society.
After morning tea, Cynthia and I worked on our books in separate locations.
A few months later, torrential rain hit the area. The Mary River rose. Creeks flooded, cutting off roads and water crept into the far edges of the horse paddock.
Cynthia assured me: ‘I’ve lived here through two floods,’ she said. ‘The water has never risen as high as your campsite.’
But one night I awoke to water lapping.
I waded back and forth through water, saving my laptop and valuables, but by then the mattress was soaked and other belongings had been swept up in the torrent.
IMAGE of Maree’s flooded tent supplied
The dogs and I slept in the van out front of the property and in the morning the tent was gone. Muddy water gurgled and in the distance bobbed my yellow gas bottle.
Trapped by flooded creeks and waterways, Cynthia and I watched the disaster unfold on her television. The Mary River had peaked at 22.8 metres, the highest level since 1893.
Gympie was underwater.
The three-story building where I worked (at night) was a couple of chimney pipes.
I lost my tent-home, most everything in it and my job in one fell swoop.
And so, I finished my book sitting in my leaky van as my world sank around me.
In the crucial hours leading up to publication, my editor warned me I must have phone and laptop fully charged and accessible as the process was complicated.
It truly was mission almost impossible but we did it.
We did it!
When the proof copy arrived, I lay on my narrow van bed and hugged it to my chest for a long time.
It really hit home when my editor phoned to congratulate me.
‘You’re an author now,’ he said.
A homeless author. That was me.
With a shortage of housing, rising rents, and well, you just never know what someone has been through.
When I was stuck in my van, often hounded by rate payers in Lycra and rangers in uniform, I wished they’d asked me if I was okay; or brought me an early morning coffee. Now, wouldn’t that be nice?
You can find my book No Second Chance at the library, or can read the first three chapters free via this link: www.mareefrench.com
