TLP MAG 4 - The Special Edition 2012

Governor-GeneralA WOMAN namedLinda stands inthe dripping darktelling MichaelBryce the dreadfulcircumstances of herlife, sipping soupserved by QuentinBryce.Australia Governor-General, Ms Quentin Bryce visiting MelbourneTuesday 16 May 2012. Photographer - Craig Abraham, Fairfax Syndication.Linda has three children aged 13, sevenand four. At the age of 45, she is 30 weekspregnant. Her husband abandoned the familymonths ago, she says. The house was next togo. Bit by bit, she has sold everything to keepher children together.Yesterday, she says, she sold her weddingring. Now there’s nothing left.And here she is, on a cold night on a rainslickedfootpath in North Melbourne, waiting ina queue of night people to be fed. Linda will takenothing more than a cup of soup for herself. Shefills a bag with sandwiches so that her childrenwill have something to eat tomorrow.‘’I’m from the middle class,’’ Linda says. ‘’Ihave a master’s in psychology. I didn’t realisepeople lived like this, but now I’m one of them.’’She is weeping. Michael Bryce reaches out ahand to comfort her. ‘’He’s like the favourite uncleyou 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 ofthermoses. 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 nightpeople with the Society of St Vincent de Paulsoup vans.The vans, two of them, come every night tothis street kerb by a park in North Melbourne.The hungry, the lost, the hopeful and thesometimes disoriented simply appear out of thedark, dozens of them.18 THE LAST POST - The Special Edition - Aug/Sep 2012

energi sedThe presence of the Governor-General ofAustralia and her husband on this night offersa curious departure from routine. Yet many ofthose gathered on the footpath hardly notice.They are there for the food.Sandwiches, hot pies, soup, coffee and -tonight - toiletries, are handed out by volunteersand the vice-regal couple.And then, when the doors of the vans close, allthose people melt away, swallowed by the night.It is another stop along a very long road forthis Governor-General.Since her appointment on September 8,2008, Ms Bryce has undertaken 2700 publicengagements (‘’community engagements’’,she corrects). That’s an average of more thantwo a day, every single day, more by a longstretch than any of her predecessors. The wordcommunity means much to this Governor-General. It implies connections everywhere,from women in remote outback homesteadsto the night people of North Melbourne, andeveryone between. Ms Bryce has set herself thetask of listening to all their stories.She is patron of no fewer than 275organisations, from the Access DinghyFoundation to the Young, Pregnant and ParentingNetwork. Mr Bryce is patron of another 32.It doesn’t stop on Australia’s shores.As Commander-in-Chief of the AustralianDefence Force, the Governor-General flew toAfghanistan for Anzac Day. She insisted onstaying the night with the troops - her troops- the first Australian dignitary to do so. Today,she is off to East Timor for the 10th anniversaryof that nation’s independence.Early this week, she visited Melbourne forthree days of dawn to after-dark engagements,all of them to organisations offering succour tothose who need it most. Which is why she and herhusband took to the street with the Vinnies vans.After North Melbourne, it was off toa backstreet in Fitzroy where Mr Bryce,introducing himself to the late-night hungry as‘’just the trainee’’, doled out Chiko Rolls andpies, and Ms Bryce, having emptied the hotchocolate thermos, fell into a long ramblingby endless whirl ofengagement withcommunityby Tony Wrightconversation with a fellow wearing a beard,dark glasses and sandals clinging to bare feet.‘’Doesn’t it exhaust you?’’ The SaturdayAge asks late the next day, after trailingthe Governor-General to and from six moreengagements, each in a different suburb.She had talked privately in the morning withmothers and young women undergoing drug andalcohol rehabilitation at the Salvation Army’sBridgehaven centre in Preston, listened to studentsat Collingwood Alternative School describe howthe Hands-On Learning program had reignitedtheir excitement about attending school, metelderly people at the Brotherhood of St Laurence’sCoolibah Centre in Fitzroy, where for 82 years thelonely from rooming houses have found meals andsocial connection, attended a Women’s Networkluncheon, visited indigenous women and childrensheltering from family violence at ElizabethHoffman House in Fairfield, admired the works ofintellectually disabled artists at the Q ArtStudioin Kew, where she buys her Christmas gifts, anddandled babies at the Melbourne Citymission EarlyChildhood Development Program in Brunswick,the sun gone.Ms Bryce, mother of five, grandmother ofnine with a 10th due any day, will be 70 inDecember.‘’Exhausts me? Oh, no, it energises me.’’ she says.Those years as Governor-General, she says,have changed her.‘’I’ve learnt so much from so many people, myunderstanding of who we are is deeper, I’ve becomemore reflective and a little wiser,’’ she says.The connection with people devastated bybushfire, flood and cyclone, the correspondencewith 32 families who had lost boys in Afghanistan… these, she says, prompted profound reflection.And those people from the night in NorthMelbourne and Fitzroy, and all the others.‘’I thought I knew a fair bit about Australia, I’dbeen involved in so many things during my life.But what I have learned in the last 3½ years …in some ways, I’d just scratched the surface.’’And then she is off to her next communityengagement, with a stream of them yet to come.www.theage.com.auI’ve learnt somuch from somany people, myunderstandingof who we areis deeper, I’vebecome morereflective and alittle wiser,’