I decided pretty quickly that would be missing the point.
Homeless people don’t have the luxury of deciding they’ll just stay in their comfortable home when they’re feeling unwell.
Keyboard warriors spruik about these kinds of events in social media comments sections, criticising that they’re pointless because they don’t give a true indication of what it’s like to be homeless if you’ve taken extra clothing, or if you will have food available, a secure space, and so on.
The homelessness tag covers many forms of living, though, not just sleeping rough.
It also includes people couch surfing, people living in less-than-ideal conditions in overcrowded rooms, people living in refuges.
Indeed, no-one can truly grasp the reality of what it feels like to be homeless unless they are actually homeless, worrying where they’ll next sleep, where their next meal will come from or what it will be, how they’ll clean themselves, how they’ll stay safe.
But we can try by dipping our toes in. And while we’re doing that, we can at least support events such as these, putting our money where our mouths are and contributing to alleviating the challenges faced by those less fortunate than us.
I set up my cardboard bed with grand intentions of attempting to sleep on it later, then set to writing the six stories I was there to cover, close to a power point for my laptop.
Around 11.30pm, someone yelled that the sprinklers were on.
I thought they were joking, but by the time I realised they weren’t and moseyed on over to our freshly watered shanty town, my cardboard was soggy, my sleeping bag and pillow dampened and my jacket and beanie were also dripping.
It was not without the best efforts of my neighbour, the lovely Philip Hickingbotham from Shepparton Christian College, doing his best to spare them all for me as well as his own.
At that point, I’d made little headway into my articles anyway and decided I’d sooner stay awake all night and write than try to sleep on the wet bedding with an insistent crushed nerve in my spine.
It was just one night of lost sleep that I will recover from over the Easter break.
I’m not complaining because I’m not facing that scenario night after night, like 79 Greater Shepparton youth do every day.
I commend Jim and his crew for bringing this metro-inspired event to regional Victoria (where the homelessness rates are higher), professionally, informatively and successfully.
25°C