“I feel like I have a future now”

“I came to find The Footpath Library after being homeless for about 10 years. I was starting to rely on food vans, and suddenly this miraculous library turned up. I wasn’t entitled to a library card at the time because I was homeless. I can’t even put it into words. It was just extraordinary to be around people who were always positive, and I’d mention an author that I really enjoyed, and suddenly that author would appear; and it just felt very encouraging. It really started to make me re-interested in the idea of education, going back and doing my HSC which I eventually did.

I completed my HSC after three years. It was a bumpy road but I made it. I won quite a few awards and was quite surprised when I got a mark that would get me into my very first choice of art theory and arts; and the idea has always been in the back of my mind since I was very young of becoming an academic in the arts but it never seemed like a possibility and suddenly it was.

You know, I feel like I’ve got a future now.

Just being poor doesn’t mean that’s it. I really feel like I’m ultimately going to achieve my goals of becoming a lecturer and writing professionally and being involved with the arts; and having these qualifications, which frankly, I sort of had given up on.

I think the one thing people forget, homelessness is such a big issue and just meeting peoples’ basic needs takes everything, from charities and from governments… But you get to a point where you’re given everything – you’re being given food, you need food so you turn up to the food vans and the like. You need accommodation, you’re given it. The one thing about The Footpath Library that sort of got me fired up over time was I’m not going to die if I don’t have a book but it’s amazing to actually have the choice of taking one ‘home’. Something that I’m personally interested in, that I don’t necessarily need, but in an odd kind of way, everybody needs.”