The job that has fed Brenda’s soul for 25 years: Hutt St Centre’s first full-time cook to hang up her apron

A big-hearted Adelaide chef who has for decades been feeding some of the state’s most needy says she has gained much more than she has given. Here’s Brenda McCullock’s touching story.

Brenda McCulloch with regular client Lachlan at the centre. Picture: Tricia Watkinson

For the past two and a half decades, chef Brenda McCullock has been lovingly feeding Adelaide’s down and out but by her own admission, she has gained as much as she has given.

“I am sure it has made me a better person, a softer person — it has made me put my own good fortune in life in perspective,” says the 65-year-old.

“Once you are exposed to people who are really living on the margins of life, you have to take a good look at your own circumstance, and be grateful for what you have.

“Giving back is the biggest reward you can have, when someone comes and so sincerely thanks your for a cup of tea, it just stops you in your tracks.”

The Scottish-born chef who relocated to Australia as a 24-year-old, is preparing to hang up her apron after 25 years of 5.40am starts, as the Hutt St Centre’s first full-time cook.

Before applying for the position she was working as a chef at a city hotel but didn’t want to stay after changes to the state’s gambling laws allowed poker machines in pubs and clubs.

She’d been forever scarred by a chance encounter interstate years earlier with a woman left “alone, distressed and too frightened to go home” after putting her entire pay packet through the pokies — and knew she didn’t want to work where there were poker machines.

At the Hutt St Centre she found so much more than a new job.

“The other day I had a man say to me, ‘you must be my Grandma, she cooked me food like this’ (to think) I have evoked a nice thought in his day — the lovely memory of his grandmother — makes me happy,” she says.

“I have seen people come in for the first time to have breakfast and not want to raise their head and look at you — they have zero self confidence, they just want to be invisible and fly under the radar … to see them a couple of months later when their confidence has grown and they’re happy to see you and chat with you, I love to see that.”

The 2012 City of Adelaide Citizen of the Year who has served up more than a million meals to South Australians in need over the past 25 years says homelessness doesn’t discriminate.

“It is mind-boggling. I’ve fed everyone from former MPs to authors and (fallen) business leaders here … the lesson I have learned is to not ever judge people, as you simply don’t know their story.

“The line is so fine between needing the services of (somewhere like the) Hutt St Centre and having a comfortable life — judgment is a terrible thing.”

Ms McCullock says it is a sense of respect and self-worth those who visit the centre most need.

“The minute you become immune to other people’s hardship and sadness, you shouldn’t be in the job … we have to mend people sometimes, and you can’t do that if you don’t care.”

More than a dozen volunteers help in the kitchen so breakfast and lunch can be served up each weekday.

“The volunteers are the ones who set the bar for me … they just come here and do what they can for their fellow human beings and that inspires me — a lot don’t just volunteer here, they do Vinnys and Meals on Wheels, they are always putting their hand up to do more,” says Ms McCullock who will continue to work at the centre part-time as a volunteer when she retires on July 1.

“(The Hutt St Centre) has become a big chunk of my life and my heart and it will be sad to finish up but I am looking forward to a sleep in,” she laughs.