Freddy
My life has fallen into a few stages.
As a child, I lived in Box Hill when it was village. I then became pastor to the slums of inner Melbourne for eight years. I was then a country parson and a teacher at a one teacher bush school out at Jackson Creek in Western Victoria and then for 13 years, I was a suburban minister in one of Australia’s largest suburban ministries.
And then, for more than 27 years I’ve been Superintendent in Sydney of Wesley Mission, Australia’s largest church ministry.
I’ve told you stories of people in each of these places.
Tonight I want you to come with me into the heart of the city.
All my life since leaving high school and entering training for the ministry, I have been involved somewhere or other in helping homeless people. Caring for the homeless is not as attractive as it sounds. My first lesson when as a student minister I started in the inner slums of North Melbourne was a very hard one. I found that many homeless people are aggressive, unlovely, smelly, angry and sometimes physically violent. Working with the homeless is often done with a sort of personal detachment from them. I have noticed over the years the many social workers come in and out together with professional health carers with those involved in welfare work but they never become emotionally involved with the homeless people themselves.
I have made it a habit over the years of sitting down with homeless people when I see them. I have sat on the low steps outside the city Court, on several part benches in Hyde Park, and on factory or shop steps after hours. On occasions I have taken homeless people to my home to have a meal or into any restaurant for a cup of tea and coffee to talk to them about their own lives. This has always been very illuminating. When I first started working with homeless people in the slums of Melbourne more than 40 years ago I realised that many of the people who were homeless had some mental health problems. Because of my interest in psychology and in mental health I have continued to keep that interest.
In my early days most homeless people were alcoholic, who worked on the wharves or in some blue-collar heavy industry. The vast majority of them were ex-servicemen. A disproportionate number of them were former boxers and most had some form of brain damage. The brain damage is caused by the abuse of alcohol, but I wondered how many of them were brain damaged when they turned to alcohol.
Over the years there have been tremendous changes amongst those who are homeless. There are very few ex-servicemen these days as the older men have already died. Virtually no one has ever worked on the whalves because of the change in work practices to containerisation, and it has been probably 15 years since I last met a homeless person who had been a boxer. However almost every homeless person in the streets of Sydney with whom I talk has some other kind of mental or physical disability. A good example is seen in the life of my good friend Freddy. I first met Freddy in the very early 1980s. In those days I preached fairly regularly in the church of the homeless in Edward Eager Lodge in Darlinghurst. He was readily noticeable because he was short and slight. He was really a man in a boy’s body, weighing only about 35 kilos. He was very well spoken and very well dressed. He was polite and rarely used foul language. He was very awkward in his physical movements as if he had suffered some spasticity and I found out that he could be easily provoked and become extremely aggressive. Actually that aggressiveness was to increase.
I recognized at once the Freddy should not be on the homeless scene and spoke to my staff to try and get alternative accommodation for him. For various reasons none of the alternative accommodation was acceptable to Freddy. He had found a place where he was safe and secure. He had a good room in the new building run by Wesley Mission. He had a place where he could make secure all his personal possessions. There was no way that he was going to leave to go to another. As good as that might be, he was in an environment that would do little to help him develop his skills and abilities and become socially upward mobile. Freddy was born on the North Shore to a fairly average working-class family. He was the first born and he had three brothers born after him. His mother worked in the home and cared for the family of four children. His father was a Second World War veteran who came home with an alcoholism problem and he always had a shaky work record.
This father’s alcoholism meant that when drunk he became aggressive and had all sorts of arguments and fights with his wife. That disturbed Freddy and his three brothers and he told me that he used to stand guard to care for his mother’s physical safety while his father berated her on certain matters. Sometimes they physically intervene to protect their mother. Freddy said to me “he was pretty aggressive when he was drunk.” Freddie went on to say “the last time my brothers and I met he put me away in some sort of a rehabilitation centre, sort of mental hospital. I may have been in my early to mid-20s and I stayed there for quite some time. It would have been about two months. When I left there I found out that Dad had taken his own life.”
At this time Freddy was not a drinker at all worked in a sheltered workshop. This sheltered workshop was at Parramatta. After a period of time there he moved to further west to Penrith and to a place called Cherrywood Village. In this particular sheltered workshop he used to make furniture such as tables and chairs and also was involved in weaving scarves and making boxes.
I wondered why it was that Freddy left that secure employment and accommodation and became homeless on the streets of Darlinghurst. His answer was simple. “Well I eventually got fired from the sheltered workshop for reasons that someone dreamed up. I was unjustly fired.” Although that it was what Freddy thinks, my own experience is that a person is not fired from a sheltered workshop unless they have become continuously aggressive towards other workers. I guess this might have been the problem with Freddy but his memory is quite hazy at this point. Freddy started drinking in 1982 and he blames the fact of his drinking upon the police. Like every alcoholic he has a rational reason as to why everything happens in this life. Freddy takes no responsibility for his behaviour, or his reactions in situations. Everything is the fault of someone else. He said to me “I first started drinking in 1982 when I heard on the radio that the Royal couple Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer were to have a special function at the Sheraton Wentworth Hotel. I made it a point to see them arrive and see them leave. I saw them arrive but before I could see them leave the police picked me up and took me to the cells. They said I was drunk at the time and I wasn’t. I was completely stone cold sober but they picked me up. I was born with this condition and it makes me look as if I am drunk but I wasn’t drunk. They took me to the watch house at the Central Police Station and they held me there for quite some time. When they released me—-that was when I started drinking. It was a golden opportunity. I blame the police for that. Before that time my record was absolutely spotless and I didn’t drink.”
Freddy descent into alcoholism was very rapid. He became increasingly aggressive. He used to fight people, even people who were much larger than himself. I remember some of the older alcoholics we cared for at that time like Les and Barney and Charlie. Each of these could be easily aroused and each of these had been boxers in their day. I could imagine that when little Freddy picked upon them he always came off worse. I discovered about this time that some of these men, because of his small size, general dirty appearance and aggressive behaviour, called him “Maggott”. That was a dreadful nickname. It certainly didn’t do anything for his sense of self-worth. It was also a trigger to a violent reaction. When anybody called Freddy “Maggott” he would fly into an incredible temper and start punching the person concerned. And even though he would be hurt in turn, he would keep punching without ceasing.
I often saw Freddie with bashed face, blackened eyes, cut lips and the like and realised that he had been in a fight. The very person who should not have been fighting with alcoholic former boxers was the one who was constantly being injured. Again I try to get my staff to get Freddy out of the scene but without success. In fact Freddy was becoming one of the worst kind of people on the homeless scene. A person who is regarded as permanent and hopeless as far as rehabilitation was concerned.
On Christmas Day in 1990, I was preaching at our church the homeless at Darlinghurst, with Freddie sitting in the front row looking much the worse for an alcoholic binge and an aggressive street fight on Christmas Eve. After the service I sat beside him and talked for some time to find out what had happened. Showing concern for him in that situation was a young woman who was homeless herself because of a gambling addiction. They were mutually supportive although there was no romantic involvement, they were simply too pieces of hurt humanity washed up onto the footpath. I decided to offer them both a challenge. If they could go from Christmas Day 1990 for12 months without drinking or gambling, I would pick them up in a hire car and take them to have dinner with me in the very posh restaurant at the top of Centre Point Tower. They both knew this Sydney landmark and had seen hire cars from time to time whisking wealthy people from the eastern suburbs into the city. I painted a picture of a white gleaming limousine putting up outside Edward Eager Lodge and with both of them perfectly dressed at their best, getting in and riding with my wife and myself to Centre Point to have a relaxed evening meal as the restaurant slowly circled as we looked down upon the city.
The picture was indelicately etched on their mind and they both encourage the other to make a go of it. Only Freddy wanted to bargain. He was not prepared to give up drinking just then. Because he had been looking forward to getting well and truly drunk on New Year’s Eve. He didn’t want to miss that bright possibility and so he negotiated with me to start on the first day of 1991!.
Throughout the year I kept contact with them both every week, encouraging them and talking them through their difficulties. The young woman with fixed resolution decided that she would not gamble on the poker machines any more and as the months went by her whole life and outlook changed. Freddy had difficulties but still stayed away from the grog. Three months went by and then six months. It looked as if they both were going to make it. By the end of the year they both did. I arranged a hire car stretched limo to arrive at Edgar Edward Lodge and two rather nervous well-dressed young people came out of the lodge and went off for a nights at Centre Point Tower. As we sat down looking over Sydney I congratulated both on their wonderful achievements. One for abstaining from gambling on poker machines for a whole year and the other for abstaining from drinking alcohol. At that point the waiter arrived and offered my to guests the wine list. Freddy immediately said, “Boy, what a selection I’ve got for tonight.” He had promised to abstain from drinking until the dinner but any future at the abstention would need to be negotiated!
Although Freddy didn’t drink at that meal, it wasn’t long afterwards that I noticed the usual watery eyes, thick lip and blackened eye. When asked why he started drinking again his reply was, “Well someone did something to me and I just can’t think what it was, but someone at Edward Eager Lodge insulted me and that made me very angry and then I started drinking again.”
Once again small Freddy was blaming other people and refusing to take responsibility for his own actions.
About this time the government changed its plan for homeless people once more. I’ve been through more than a dozen changes of plans from government departments. Because departmental staff change so frequently and because no one seems to have a memory, the latest graduate in social work comes in with some bright new idea and government policy changes. This time the major centres in the heart of the city who were caring for the homeless were to be viewed only as a transition point. Homeless people were not allowed to have accommodation on any permanent basis but were to be shifted out to houses in the community.
On paper this sounds like a good idea but in reality the streets and the inner city are the chosen homes of these homeless people and to eject them from the only place they know and where they feel secure is to submit them to an enormous trauma.
One man who had really found contentment and peace in his heart living at Edward Eager Lodge was so devastated with the thought of having to leave that he threatened suicide rather than shift. When our staff gently pointed out that the relocation was going to be done as carefully and as sensitively as possible, this man just couldn’t hear any of those words. He was being evicted from the one place he felt secure. Poor Frank was in such a turmoil of mind that he caught the ferry to Manly and half way across Sydney Harbour, threw himself into the harbour.
Fortunately a staff member of the Urban Transport Ferry Service saw him throw himself into the sea and commenced the rescue bid just before poor Frank went under for the last time.
The trauma of leaving impacted on Freddy’s life as well. Staff carefully explained that he had to shift from the only place where he felt secure. He did not appreciate that at all. He argued with my staff at great lengths but the government was fixed in its resolve. Freddy found a room in a boarding house in Stanmore. It wasn’t what he wanted and certainly not what we wanted, but into that single room he shifted his only possessions.
I noticed the change in his appearance immediately. His hair and beard grew long and scraggy, his clothes became filthy dirty because he never change them. His personal body odour became dreadful and he was constantly on the walls with other people.
One point made me very sad. We have helped Freddy develop the one big interest in his life, in watching videos on his own video recorder and television set. When he moved to Stanmore there was no lock on the door of his room and it wasn’t long before he reported to me that the video, television and videos that he had collected over the years had all been stolen by other residents and sold to support their drug habbits.
The owner of the boarding house did not believe it was his responsibility to show any personal interest in his residents. He took the $306 rent and as for how the men in the boarding house lived, that was their business.
At this time Freddy stopped sleeping inside and started to sleep outside except on the most cold nights. He pays his rent but doesn’t sleep in his room. He likes to sleep in what he calls the “Starlight hotel.” “I like sleeping out in the Starlight Hotel because it is hot and sticky in summertime, it is very hot and you sweat like a pig so I sleep out for the night. I find places against walls and park benches, and on the beaches and suburban stations. I used to sleep on the railway trains, you get kicked off at railway stations.”
Today I’m constantly telling Freddy to come into Wesley Mission and to use our
showers or to go to one of our clothing shops and choose a new clothes that at our cost and to throw away his current clothes to be burned because Freddy now has a new addiction, one that is not understood by most people. In the same way as people can be addicted to gambling and to alcohol and other drugs, Freddy has become addicted to the streets. He only feels at home and comfortable if he is on the streets. He only feels secure if he sleeps on the streets. Like a the number of homeless people in the centre of Sydney, I know quite well that Freddy will refuse any attempts to have him cleaned, washed, in decent clothing living in a room or apartment. He has become addicted to street living.
Those who live on the streets are very vulnerable yet they find safety in their dirtiness. They are rarely bashed or assaulted on the streets because robbers and rapists make a decision that they don’t want to become personally too close to such a person.
Freddy’s drinking habits have changed. He drinks constantly, McWilliams red wine. He scrounges as much money as he can to constantly buy bottles of the cheapest red wine. I asked him, “How long would a bottle of wine last?” and he replied “Straight off it would be about 20 minutes, it depends how quick you drink it.”
The reason Freddy and other street people drink red wine is not that it gives them an intoxicated lift or makes them feel happy, on the contrary it is because it makes them feel sleepy. As soon as they go to sleep they feel alright. When they wake up their first desire is to have another drink, to get another bottle of wine from the hotel or bottle shop or to do something that will give them the money to get the next bottle. Freddy eats little food and depends upon charities and others. He says:” I don’t like to say this but when I’m outside I usually get my food from the garbage cans. and I get my cigarettes there is well because it pays to look in garbage cans because I’ve found packets of cigarettes nearly full there.” I said on one occasion when I saw him fossicking in a street garbage can for cigarette butts that it was a filthy habit putting into his mouth what had been in other peoples mouths and he replied to me with the simplicity of a logically thinking person, “Well I’m saving other people from picking them up and start smoking.”
I’ve asked him if he realises what smoking other peoples butts is doing to his lungs and he replied “well they’re gradually declining” Freddy sees a doctor only rarely, about as frequently as he has a shower.
Once when I questioned him about his body odour Freddy told me that his way of getting clean was to wait for a summer’s day and then go down the beach and just swim in the water with his clothes on. That way he both cleans his clothes and cleans himself.
It would be wrong to think of Freddy as a man without any ability or talent. I told you that he speaks very well and has got a sharp mind and a good memory and has learnt by heart the words of many songs and will off to sing for you at the drop of a hat. At the church of the homeless he constantly goes to the organ and with two hands picks out and play some hymn tunes.
Not long ago, Freddy’s closest relative, an Aunty at Port Macquarie died. We purchased a couple of tickets for Freddy and his friend Alan to fly up to Port Macquarie for the funeral and to see other members of the family. His greatest desire following this first trip on an aircraft was to go to Portal Macquarie again in future to meet with some of his cousins. If you ask Freddy he will tell you that he is the Christian. He comes to church every Sunday and sits in the front row in the seat nearest the aisle. He attends the Chapel in the City where I preach every week at Thursday lunchtime and again sits in the front row. I asked him what his Christian faith meant to him and he replied, “Well I am glad to be drawing closer and closer to God all the time.” I said “You might be getting closer to God but you are not letting God change your life, are you?” He replied, “I will one day when I eventually decided to stop thinking with my head.”
Freddy is 62. I avoid giving him cash because I know he only goes out and buys a cask of red wine or several bottles and goes into oblivion for a long period of time. The other day I gave him $20 after he had agreed to have a cup of coffee with me and as he left he promised me faithfully that he would use the money to get himself a good meal and not a bottle of wine but if I believe that, I would believe anything.
I told you the story of Freddy for one reason, to help you understand that homeless people are real people who have hopes, desires and fears like anybody else but many of them suffer from addiction to the streets and addiction that means they will never accept an offer of a place to live. Their home is the street and there is very little we can do when a person is totally committed to sleeping in the Starlight hotel.
The city of Sydney would grow to be one of the world’s great cities and Wesley Mission would grow to be one of the world’s great churches and I was privileged to spend each day in the heart of both.