Outreach workers Ada Watson and Ayden McMahon are at the coalface of the homelessness crisis, watching over rough sleepers and working to help the desperate and the vulnerable.
It's 9am and the frost is still melting from the freezing cold night.
Ada Watson and Ayden McMahon pull on thick coats as they prepare to head out on their daily rounds, helping rough sleepers in the regional Victorian city of Ballarat.
They don't know what they'll find today.
On previous nights like this, one person's sleeping bag had frozen solid during the night.
Ayden's already searched through a pile of donated coats, on the hunt for one that might fit a man who's been sleeping at a sporting ground grandstand nearby.
They pack blankets, thermals, water, food and tarps into their van while planning their movements for the morning.
Each day, Ada and Ayden have the welfare of more than 70 people who are sleeping rough in the Ballarat region on their minds, working as outreach workers for community support agency Uniting.
And they carry the weight of knowing it's unlikely they'll be able to house them any time soon.
"We can't always help with a house, but just the smallest bit of help and just making someone smile in a day is all they need sometimes," Ada says.
"We don't really have a typical day, there are no two days that are the same.
"We could have a nice cruisy day where we are just checking in on everyone on outreach, or we could have a day where we are putting out spotfires all day because there is crisis after crisis."
The van's engine ticks over and they're on the road, scanning the streets for rough sleepers on the way to their first stop.
Even just seeing someone briefly while driving past can reassure Ada and Ayden that that person is going OK today.
"Now I'm just watching here because this is one of ours," Ada says while driving past a man stopped, leaning over some bags near a roundabout.
"I might just check that he is OK."
After a quick stop, it's on to a sporting ground where a tent and pile of possessions is hidden in a nook between a brick wall and a shipping container on one side of the sports field.
A young couple has lived there for six months but aren't home today.
They've been visiting family members further west in Horsham who don't know they've been sleeping rough.
"We probably know more about these people than their family and friends a lot of the time because they can tell us," Ada says.
Ada and Ayden decide to come back in a few days to check the couple have returned safely.
They climb back in the van and drive on to the next stop, parking beside a river not far from the centre of town.
They're here to check on a young man who has been battling drug addiction and psychosis who they know has set up home here.
"It is really hard to tackle big issues when someone is on the street because their whole existence just becomes survival," Ayden says.
Ada and Ayden head off the beaten track through damp green grass in the shade of overhanging trees, until they come across a small, thin, grey hiking-style tent with a blue tarp draped over it.
Nobody's home.
Rough sleepers frequently head into town during the day to access services including food relief, hot breakfast and lunch, free showers and washing machines.
Ayden wonders how the young man got through the freezing night with such a thin layer of cover.
During COVID lockdowns, government boosts to homelessness service funding took vulnerable people like him off the streets and into the protected warmth of hotels.
But now that money has dried up — so Ada and Ayden's only option is to return later in the week with a better-quality tent.
As he inspects the thin material of the flimsy tent, Ayden says he has struggled to come to terms with the lack of housing available.
The Council to Homeless Persons says people who are sleeping rough are likely to wait up to 18 months before being placed into housing.
"It is the hardest part of the job," Ayden says.
"I honestly did struggle with it a lot when I started the role because I am quite pragmatic — I like to get things done and get onto the next person. Then I found there just wasn't enough housing.
"I was hitting these roadblocks, along with my clients, and it took me a long time to come to terms with that."
Finding the normal in a simple barbecue
Ada takes off her thick green coat as she gets back into the warmth of the van.
Next stop is a local hotspot for rough sleepers — a free campground along the banks of a large lake outside of town.
There are usually about a dozen people staying here. Some have stayed here for more than a year.
Ada and Ayden try to make it out to check on them about once a week.
Today, they've planned a barbecue for a casual catch-up and a hot meal.
They park the van next to a shelter by the lake.
It has started drizzling and the wind is whipping across the water, so they'll set up the barbecue under cover.
Ada walks along the caravans and tents dotted along the bank to spread the word they're starting up the barbecue, while Ayden carries the cooking gear to the shelter table.
Soon eggs, bacon and hash browns are sizzling on the grill and the kettle's boiling.
Ada hands a coffee in a white paper cup to Keith, who puts black gloves on his hands which are swollen and purple from the cold.
Bill ties up his dog Ronin and joins the gathering, saying he'll take a roll with the lot — egg, bacon, hash brown and cheese.
Ayden cracks more eggs onto the grill and chats to Ray about his day, while Ada offers Dana fresh water, food and some camping mats from the van.
"It is just people catching up and having something to eat, having a coffee, having a laugh, just because it's a normal thing to do," Ada says.
"Sometimes they don't have a normal thing to do, so why not just do that?"
She takes a pile of thermals and hands them out to the group that's now huddled in the shelter, chatting together, with their hands wrapped around cups of hot coffee.
It's Ray Farquhar's first time at a Uniting barbecue and his first time meeting the others who are living at the lake.
He walks back to his tent after finishing up his meal while Ada and Ayden clean up.
"It is good to see others. At least it is good to know them," Ray says.
"They can keep an eye out for my property and I can keep an eye out for them.
"But it is good to socialise. I enjoyed it."
Ray's been sleeping in a tent for six months.
He never imagined he'd be living like this at 60.
"I've never had to struggle," he says, sitting beside the lakeside spot he's carved out as his home.
"This is the first time in my life."
Ray had been living in a private rental property before moving in with his daughter to help care for his grandchildren.
After the fifth grandchild arrived, there was no longer room for Ray and his dogs in the house.
So it was back to the battleground of the private rental market with a pension budget of about $500 a week.
"I tried but got knocked back and knocked back. I've got a good record but it doesn't help," he says.
"It is too dear. They want at least $300 or $400 a week but for it not to be more than 25 per cent of your wage."
Ada and Ayden have helped Ray submit an application for social housing.
He's trying to make his temporary home as comfortable as possible while he waits.
There is a television set up inside the 10-man tent, where grocery bags hang from the roof for storage and a fridge hums with power from a generator.
Ray apologises for the leaves and dirt on the tent floor next to his double mattress draped with a leopard-print cover.
Loading...There's a single mattress set up on the opposite side for when his grandkids visit.
"It's hard when your hips are no good, trying to get up and down," Ray says.
"I am a diabetic and I have got high blood pressure and a heart problem.
"It's not the way to go at this age."
After cleaning up the barbecue, Ada and Ayden bring out food, water and firewood, as well as tarps to help Ray protect his tent from the wind and rain.
Ada says they'll bring a pair of boots next time, after Ray tells them he stepped on a nail while dismantling old wooden pallets for firewood.
It went right through his foot and out the top of his shoe.
"It's good because I'm a person who don't ask for help," Ray says.
"It is a lot off my mind."
Ray says the weather can be brutal by this lake — one time the wind knocked him off his feet.
The cold hasn't worried him too much, but handling the summer heat — and snakes — is his biggest fear.
"I'm just praying I'll get a house soon."
Women emerge as the newly homeless
Dana lives in a caravan with her three dogs a short drive around the bank of the lake from Ray.
"I've been out at here now for a bit over 12 months," she says.
"Here is one of the few places I know of that you can stay as long as you need to without being told to move on."
When the lease ended on Dana's property almost three years ago, she struggled to afford another rental on a welfare payment of $550 a fortnight.
"I was very fortunate that I had a brother that helped me out and brought me a caravan so I wouldn't have to live in my car," she says.
"That has been a godsend. If it wasn't for my brother, I don't know where I would be."
Women make up the majority of newly homeless people, Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows.
The number of females experiencing homelessness increased by about 10 per cent from 2016 to 2021.
While Dana says she feels relatively safe by the lake with her "permanent resident" neighbours, Ada worries about vulnerable women on the streets.
"I have worked with some women in the past who have said, at night-time, you just can't sleep because that is when you can get attacked. You may get assaulted, you may get bashed," Ada says.
"At night-time they have got to stay awake, and then daytime having a sleep on a park bench or in a train station is much safer because no-one is going to attack them in the daylight when there are people around."
Ada refers to one woman she formed a connection with while she was sleeping rough who she couldn't stop thinking about.
"Every night I would worry about her safety. Every weekend I would be scared because I didn't know if she was going to be OK," Ada says.
Seeing an increase of families sleeping rough plagues Ada's mind too.
She and Ayden provided assistance to three families with children under 12 last financial year.
Ada says she cried every day, knowing a mother and her three children were sleeping in a nearby state forest.
"I am a mum and I know everything I do is about my kids and keeping them safe, so when there are kids that are sleeping rough and I can't fix that, that is really hard," she says.
"We would have a cold, wet, rainy horrible night ... I would think about my family being home and warm and then I would think about these kids and the mum.
"I think about how that mum is getting through daily, because you don't want your kids to know things aren't OK."
Homelessness services across Victoria can't meet demand.
On any given day, they turn away 96 people, according to Australian Institute of Health and Welfare data.
Census data shows homelessness increased 24 per cent in the state between 2016 and 2021 to 30,000 people.
Most people say financial difficulty, family and domestic violence and housing crisis are the reasons they're seeking help.
Council to Homeless Persons chief executive Deborah Di Natale says the impact on workers like Ada and Ayden is "enormous" and it's creating high staff turnover and vacancies throughout the sector.
"They go to work every day trying to assist people who need it the most and there is nowhere to exit people from homelessness," she says.
Knowing people care can be a lifesaver
Bill, 70, has slept rough for much of the past 60 years.
He says he's seen the difference outreach workers can make and how people have slipped through the cracks without them.
"The Ballarat area because of Uniting is extremely good, so that is the main reason for staying here," he says.
Bill arrived at the lake with his caravan after spending nine months at a free campground in Ararat, further west, where there's less support.
"I tend to wander, move depending on the regulations of the area that you are in," he says.
He hangs around chatting while Ada and Ayden pack up breakfast.
"I kind of feel part of my happiness is knowing that these two in particular care about you," he says.
"It is nice to know there is the odd person on the planet who does genuinely care."
Bill's first experience of homelessness came at age 12, when he ran away from a foster home and slept rough on a white sand beach with crystal blue water near Perth.
He says struggles with his diagnosis of borderline personality disorder and feeling let down by the mental health system has kept him part of the homeless community — and it's entrenched in him now.
"I first approached a GP when I was 15. He pushed his chair back, crossed his arms, looked at me and said mental illness is witchcraft, it is not for me," Bill says.
"Of the past 60-odd years, I probably spent 30 of those doing my best to fit in and function in normal society.
"I have busted my backside to be the person I am today, and I am quite proud of that person."
Not far from Bill's set-up, another man is living in a new-looking caravan he purchased with his superannuation.
Up the road, a 35-year-old is sleeping in his van. He has been sleeping rough since he was 23.
Ada says there are often other campsites set up along the bank.
"Sometimes we don't realise they are homeless or rough sleepers," she says.
"There is one guy out there who told us he is just on holidays and is not homeless, but now he is linked in after he told us his story.
"Sometimes they don't think of themselves as homeless and don't want to see themselves as homeless."
"They don't want the label," Ayden says.
Ada and Ayden wave goodbye as they drive out of the campground and head back into town.
There's a tent that's been set up in a highly visible part of Ballarat's CBD they want to check on.
They're not sure if it's still in use, as the previous user of the tent is now living in a rooming house.
There are blue tarps draped over it, with women's shoes and belongings scattered beside.
It's in a highly visible location, on a grassy patch near a shopping and fast-food strip.
Ada and Ayden peer inside.
"Hello, anybody home?"
It looks like it's been untouched for a few weeks, so they discuss making a report to the local council for it to be removed.
The phone rings and Ada takes a call from a young female client she has recently helped into housing.
The woman said she had walked into town to the supermarket and had seen her violent former partner nearby, but her phone battery died before she could share her location with Ada.
Within minutes, they're back in the van searching the streets.
Ada spots the woman standing outside the supermarket and they drive her home, a small action that possibly averted a crisis.
"A lot of the time what we find is they have lost faith and trust in people, in organisations; they feel they have been let down so many times," she says.
"For us, we have to build that rapport and let them know we are not going to leave them stranded."
Hoping for a better future
Council to Homeless Persons says 6,000 new social houses are needed each year in Victoria for the next decade to meet demand.
For Ada and Ayden, one of the best parts of the job is when they can help someone into housing.
"We don't get it every day, so when we do get it it is quite special," Ayden says.
"A lot of our clients, we have been walking alongside them for years waiting for this and fighting for it."
But in the meantime, they'll continue offering a hand where it is needed most.
"We can't fix everything but we can be there and help make the situation just a little bit better or a little more comfortable," Ada says.
"The perfect future would be that we have ended homelessness. That is the one thing we charge towards."
Credits
- Reporter: Rochelle Kirkham
- Photography: Rochelle Kirkham
- Video: Darryl Torpy
- Digital production: Steve Kelly