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TLP MAG 4 - The Special Edition 2012

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.

18 THE LAST POST - The Special Edition - Aug/Sep 2012

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