AT 19 years old, I slept on park benches and anywhere else I could find for 240 days.
Rain-soaked timber beneath me. Under trees. Behind takeaway shops. In the shadows beside dumpsters. Anywhere that offered even the slightest bit of shelter.
That wasn’t research. That was my life.
Now, as Senior Journalist for Local Ipswich News, I’m launching a campaign that isn’t designed to tidy up homelessness with polished slogans or feel-good headlines.
This is about pulling back the curtain on what homelessness actually looks like in our community and the toll it takes on the body, the mind and a person’s dignity.
Over the coming weeks, you’ll read stories of bloodied feet and sleepless nights. Of mothers making impossible choices just to feed their children. Of people lying awake at 3am wondering how they became invisible. Of the quiet humiliation that comes when strangers step over you as though you’re part of the footpath.
These are the stories many publications avoid because they’re uncomfortable. Too raw. Too confronting.
But homelessness was never meant to be comfortable to look at.
This campaign won’t sanitise it.
No filters. No distance. Just the reality of homelessness in Ipswich, laid bare.
