TLP MAG 4 - The Special Edition 2012
The Special Edition - Tolerance.
The Special Edition - Tolerance.
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Governor-General
A WOMAN named
Linda stands in
the dripping dark
telling Michael
Bryce the dreadful
circumstances of her
life, sipping soup
served by Quentin
Bryce.
Australia Governor-General, Ms Quentin Bryce visiting Melbourne
Tuesday 16 May 2012. Photographer - Craig Abraham, Fairfax Syndication.
Linda has three children aged 13, seven
and four. At the age of 45, she is 30 weeks
pregnant. Her husband abandoned the family
months ago, she says. The house was next to
go. Bit by bit, she has sold everything to keep
her children together.
Yesterday, she says, she sold her wedding
ring. Now there’s nothing left.
And here she is, on a cold night on a rainslicked
footpath in North Melbourne, waiting in
a queue of night people to be fed. Linda will take
nothing more than a cup of soup for herself. She
fills a bag with sandwiches so that her children
will have something to eat tomorrow.
‘’I’m from the middle class,’’ Linda says. ‘’I
have a master’s in psychology. I didn’t realise
people lived like this, but now I’m one of them.’’
She is weeping. Michael Bryce reaches out a
hand to comfort her. ‘’He’s like the favourite uncle
you always wish you had,’’ Linda confides later.
A couple of metres away, Mr Bryce’s wife,
the Governor-General, is pouring hot soup,
coffee and hot chocolate from a battery of
thermoses. Cup after cup is held out to her,
and she fills each. ‘’There you are,’’ she says.
‘’There you are.’’
Their excellencies have come to the night
people with the Society of St Vincent de Paul
soup vans.
The vans, two of them, come every night to
this street kerb by a park in North Melbourne.
The hungry, the lost, the hopeful and the
sometimes disoriented simply appear out of the
dark, dozens of them.
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