Down and Out in Melbourne

I have to apologise, but the tone of this post isn’t exactly cheery.

Things have been rough lately for many of the guys who use the homeless services I run. The cold weather is having a real impact. A number of guys have ended up in hospital with conditions like fevers and pneumonia.

About the only saving grace in such situations is the major hospitals in Oz are public and essentially free.
Yet getting a hospital bed is not the end of the guys’ problems. Often their condition will only be stabilised and then there is pressure on them to be discharged.
Once they are discharged it means straight back onto the street, there simply are not enough emergency accommodation beds in the city.

So a good deal of our time over the past little while has been work around this kind of issue.

Yesterday for example, a regular of ours (I’ll call him Dave) showed up at our breakfast service clearly very unwell. Dave had a high fever and could barely move for pain. My offsider Greg and I spent an hour making sure he got to hospital. Then I was on the phone a number of times to try to get Dave’s needs followed up.

Dave was discharged today, he’d been on intravenous anti-biotics overnight and looked quite a bit better. But nothing like well enough to spend a night on the street or under a bridge.

So I spent a good chunk of the morning phoning around to get Dave some emergency accommodation. The best I could organise: two nights of motel accommodation paid for by an accommodation agency.

As you can guess a situation like this is extremely frustrating. We are working in a system that is in my opinion badly broken.

It would be easy to get very down about how little we can achieve. Yet, what I take from an experience like this is essentially uplifting. I have done what I can, I have tried my hardest. Dave has at least a couple of nights of safety. That means something.

And who knows what we might achieve tomorrow.

Now for a change of pace a Pacific Reef Heron I “caught” up on the NSW south coast as he hunted along a wave washed rock shelf.I haven’t seen one of these guys before although they are apparently quite common around our coast.

Around the Bend

Or should that be around the corner.
Since the very hot weather of a few days ago temperatures have moderated. Out here on Melbourne’s northern fringes we’ve been having balmy 26° - 28°C days. This has induced us to go walking around our neighbourhood in the evenings.

We live in a new housing development, the downside is that we are part of continued urban sprawl. The upside is that these newer estates are leaving patches of open space and managing some of their impacts sensibly. One feature of this new thinking is capturing stormwater in artificial wetlands.

This has a double benefit: first new roads and rooftops create significant runoff which causes erosion and silting of streams if the extra water is not managed; second the wetlands are being thoughtfully developed and are becoming havens for wildlife that is otherwise displaced.

Just down our road is one of these new wetlands and the other day we went there for a stroll.

In the spirit of show and tell here are some of the wild creatures we saw.

First was a female Chestnut Teal. Unfortunately she was very shy and this was the best shot I could get of her.
These ducks are quite common, however the drought of recent years has slashed their numbers. In 2008 duck hunting season was abandoned, in 2009 there was a limited season. Debate is raging at the moment as to whether there should be a 2010 season. Die hard environmentalists argue falling waterfowl numbers and current conditions should lead to an indefinite halt to duck hunting. Some hunters argue this is just an attempt to ban what they see as a legitimate sport and a tradition going back generations.

In this case I am on the side of the ducks. While it is kind of possible to build a case for hunting ducks in a limited way, in normal seasons, those arguments go out the window with recent environmental conditions. Also, I have a moral objection to hunting most native species. Many are under terrible pressure since European settlement and in my view they have at least as much right to be here as we do.

Any way I am moving away from my point, which was the wildlife we saw in our neighbourhood. As we walked the evening was quite still, but obviously the wind up higher was fierce as attested by these clouds. The wind was tearing them apart as we watched.Then we came across this fellow hunting along the bank, a White Faced Heron. I love these guys they are so graceful. Normally they are quite shy, but this one must be a bit more used to people. After checking me out s/he went back to hunting.After I took far too many shots of the heron we turned for home.

As we walked, we heard an awful racket coming from some dead trees.
As an Aussie would put it: “It sounded like a mob of flaming galahs!”

Which in this case was close to the mark.

These are Galahs, the bird on the right is a fledgling about 90% grown. S/he was begging mum (or dad, it is hard to tell males and females apart) for a feed. I love galahs, like most parrots they are intelligent beautiful birds.

The term galah is used derisively in Oz. Ironically, given these birds intelligence, to say “you’re a bloody galah!” is to accuse someone of being a real idiot.

I’m getting distracted again. Mum (or dad) gave junior a mouthful, and hopped across to a nearby branch. Junior followed but there was already another chick there.
Galahs often hatch two chicks and sometimes as many as five, but all too often only one will survive to adulthood (if any). So these parents have had a good season.

Anyway junior continued to carry on like a flaming galah, demanding mum (or dad) continue feeding it.
This had one nice side affect as junior, while grumbling, spread out its wings allowing me to get this rather nice shot.