If you know where to look, you will see them. In cars, vans, campervans. Trying not to be noticed in dead end streets, on headlands, around parks. Trying to sleep in tents, in sand dunes, in bush camps. Women who have been tipped into homelessness. Traumatised, exhausted, disoriented. Always on high alert because they are not safe. Looking for a place to sleep, to shower, to charge a phone, to wash clothes, to eat, to get through the long nights. All their energy taken up by basic survival. Constantly moving because they could be moved on and fined.
They are no longer the welfare cases, the addicts, the unemployed, the mentally ill. They are often educated, middle-class, working women – mothers, grandmothers, aunts – forced into desperate circumstances by the…
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The Australian Women's Weekly (Digital) - 1 Issue, August 2021