The Great Divide

by Michael Sheather

Source: The Australian Women's Weekly, December, 2002

They are too often out of sight and out of mind - the abandoned, abused and anguished on society's fringes. Yet, for a few caring souls, they are fallen angels, waiting to be lifted back into life.

The sounds of indulgence are sometimes overwhelming: the soft hiss of bubbles writhing in imported crystal, lights dancing off the pale blue waters of the harbour, the captivating swish of silk and exquisitely tailored fine wool. Packed shoulder to shoulder, some of Sydney's finest and richest are crammed into one of the city's finest restaurants to celebrate the launch of a book. A virtuoso soloist fills the room with a sublime Italian love song. The champagne is French, the canapés works of art, the ambiance opulent.

Yet this is only one face of cosmopolitan Sydney. Not far from the overburdened tables of Sydney's Circular Quay, in a street behind St Mary's Cathedral, there's another gathering. Here, the quality of life is dictated not by expense but by bitter experience.

On grey pavement illuminated by feeble streetlights, more than 300 sick, homeless, destitute and poor are waiting, buffeted by a chilling wind, for a meal - probably their only meal of the day. It's a nightly ritual for the lost, acted out in the shadows of a city teeming with people who say they know where they are going.

The line stretches along the path, back into the darkness of an inner-city park. Some of those in the line sleep in the garden beds there. Others have travelled from the Blue Mountains or NSW Central Coast. Still more have shuffled up from derelict and abandoned inner-city tenements, where they scrape a place among the litter to close their eyes in relative safety for a few hours.

The sounds, too, are vastly different. Two men, staggeringly drunk, dance on the kerbside, a boom box blaring out '60s pop songs as the food van opens its doors. There's coughing and the wet slap of spit as it hits a wall. This is not a pretty world, but occasionally there are flashes of beauty. A party of volunteers - lawyers, footballers, even schoolchildren - hands out fruit muffins and pours water with fruit slices into plastic cups. Behind gaunt and bloodshot eyes, there is gratitude, relief.

Plates are filled with steaming food - curries, stews, vegetables - that disappears rapidly. Amoung the throng moves a thickset figure in a neat checked shirt. He is Jeff Gambin, the 54-year-old founder of Just Enough Faith, a privately run organisation dedicated to feeding and caring for Sydney's street people - the junkies, the mentally ill, the emotionally unstable, the broken. Jeff is one of the many good Samaritans of our cities who invest their time, their hearts and their endless compassion in people who dwell on the very fringes of our society.

Some of them are philanthropists, like Jeff. Others, such as the Reverend Bill Crews, who operates the Exodus Foundation, which feeds, clothes and strives to educate the disadvantaged in Sydney's inner-city Ashfield, have spent much of their lives serving others. Many more are ordinary Australians. People such as Kay Bow, 46, a childcare worker from Melbourne, who donate their time hoping to make a small difference in the lives of people swept along in despair's irresistible current.

Defining the extent of homelessness in Australia is a persistently vexing question. The most up-to-date figures available are from the 1996 Commonwealth Census, which states 105,000 homeless people are scattered across the country on any given night. Yet most authorities agree that this estimate is probably a significant understatement. One problem in counting the homeless is that many are hidden. They sleep in spare rooms, in temporary refuges, and are constantly on the move.

Then there is the difficulty of counting people who don't want to be found; who are mentally ill; who can't read or write and therefore can't fill out a form; and those who don't want any part of a society that has given up on them.

That is where Jeff Gambin, a former businessman and restaurateur, often steps in. "The people who come to my van are often at the lowest ebb of their lives," he says. "They could not possibly fall lower than to be living on the streets. They are abused - emotionally, physically and sometimes sexually - and isolated in a way most people can't even imagine. They have no homes, often no families, nobody to care if they live or die. It's almost as though they have ceased to exist. There is only one way for them to go from here, and that is up."

Just Enough Faith is a personal crusade for Jeff. The title derives from the letters of his name, but it means much more than a play on words. "What these people have lost, I think, is faith," he says. "Not faith in God or the world, but faith in themselves. If you have no faith in yourself, then how can anything get better? Yet if you do have faith in yourself, anything is possible."

He points down the long line of people. There are all kinds. "There's Tim," he says, waving to a man in a suit. "He's a computer analyst. He's been looking for work for a year. Enrique is up there. He's a master builder whose wife left him. He lost his family, lost his business and ended up here. Bogdan over there is a GP, but he has a mental illness and can't work. We see lawyers, dentists, journalists - we even had a professor of English.

"They are here because something has happened in their life, be it sadness or death or simply a decision to turn left instead of right. The only difference between you and them is chance. Luck. And a lot of people don't understand that."

Rekindling faith is a time-consuming and sometimes heartbreaking task. "I'm a restaurateur. That's how I made my money. I ran restaurants in Sydney for years. So, food was the natural starting point. That's where human beings come together, where they can share and where they start to open up. And where, perhaps, you can start to give someone back their self respect."

Nine years ago, a chance meeting with a homeless man in Sydney's Martin Place forced Jeff to reassess his own life. "I had a lot of business worries, a new club and several million dollars' debt," he recalls. "As I sat on a bench, all these worries crowding in, this man came to me and said I'd be better off if I moved under the arch. The wind didn't blow in there. I said, 'No, I have a home. It's all right.' He looked at me and said, 'They all say that at first.' Later he came back and, out of a plastic bag, he pulled a blanket. He gave it to me and walked away. I didn't realise what that blanket meant until later. It was everything that he owned in the world. Here was I worrying about all sorts of bullshit, and this man gave me everything that he owned - it was an act of ultimate kindness."

It was also a revelation. "His true gift to me was the realisation that I had the power to change my life," Jeff says.

He divested himself of his business problems and went searching for a new direction. He even slept on the streets so he could understand what it was like to be homeless - the cold, the fear, the uncertainty and, yes, the hunger. Six weeks later, he started Just Enough Faith.

The logistics of Jeff's operation are staggering. Each fortnight he purchases more than 900kg of chicken; each week he buys 150kg of beef; his weekly vegetable bill is between $1500 and $2000, depending on market prices and what he can negotiate.

Each night he and his crew cook up 300kg of food. A network of donors means he has fresh bread every night, as well as cakes and doughnuts, and much else. He feeds between 300 and 600 people nightly. In the past nine years, he has provided more than 1.3 million years.

"The food is good, as good as you get in a restaurant, and there is plenty of choice," says Jeff. "If people have choice, then they exercise it. It is a simple simple act of self determination, a statement that they are an individual with needs and desires."

There are no rules or conditions at Jeff's van. You show up, you get a meal. "If someone wants to change their situation, I will do everything I can to help," says Jeff, who, in 1999, was named Australia's Unsung Hero and, in 2000, Humanitarian of the Year. "I'll give them a room, I'll try to find them a job. In return, they help me cook. I ask only three things: that they never lie to me, that they never steal from me and they help one other person."

Money is a perpetual worry for Jeff. He leases 17 properties in Sydney, where he houses those he helps. He pays the rent and utilities until the tenants get their lives on track. He also makes court appearances for them and is a kind of surrogate parent for many street kids. So far, his generousity has cost him more than $4 million and he has helped hundreds of homeless people turn their lives around.

"You think I'm some kind of saint? That couldn't be further from the truth," says Jeff, who met his wife Alina, a former publisher, when she volunteered to help in the van seven years ago. "Ask most people how many true friends they have, and they would be lucky to hold up one hand. Me, if I was a millipede and each of my legs had fingers and toes, I still wouldn't have enough to hold up. I'm truly blessed."