Save The Outpost: A council move to sell ‘surplus assets’ means a key charity may be forced to close
Geelong’s only nightly non-referral service providing hot meals to those most in need is facing closure. Meet the people who will be left to go hungry if The Outpost can’t find a new home.
Geelong
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Geelong’s only nightly non-referral service providing hot meals, clothing, blankets and hygiene items to those most in need is facing closure, as the city prepares to sell off the building the charity has inhabited for the past 22 years. Harrison Tippet meets the people who will be left to go hungry if The Outpost can’t find a new home.
A fluorescent tube throws warm yellow light onto the bent and dented metal sign and open doorway below it, softly glowing on the corner of a dark backstreet in Geelong’s CBD.
The small sign, which reads ‘The Outpost’ in bold brown capital lettering, is one of the few giveaways of the service run out of the little facility it crowns: the city’s only non-referral, “no-questions asked” service providing hot meals and help to anyone who needs it.
The other giveaway is the steady flow of people in and out of the heated room, drinking steaming cups of coffee, eating hot meals, scones and doughnuts, chatting, laughing and trying on second-hand jackets and hoodies.
It’s just before the official 7.30pm opening time on a Tuesday evening and some of the city’s neediest are already filling up on warm food and grabbing supplies for the frigid night ahead.
The temperature will sink to 0.5C in the early hours of Wednesday morning, meaning a good meal and any extra blankets or jackets are vital for the people at the Outpost tonight, most of whom are experiencing some form of homelessness.
For 22 years the Outpost has kept these people warm, safe and fed, out of this small space in the city-owned Busport building, which also houses 196 commercial car parks and city office space.
But, The Outpost’s days may now be numbered, with the City of Greater Geelong earmarking the building as a “surplus asset” to be sold off to help balance its books and finance major projects such as its sparkling new $102m city offices.
Volunteers and service users are all in gloomy agreement about what the sale will mean if the charity can’t find a new home – people will be left to go hungry.
SHANE ‘Cowboy’ Malcolm-Carter has a mental vault of old adages to quote when the right moment presents itself, and fires off a couple when asked about the importance of the Outpost, and its potential closure to help the city cushion its coffers.
“A society’s greatness is measured by how well they treat their worst off – that’s a well-known cliche,” he says, sitting out the front of the Outpost with a half-eaten jam doughnut placed on a napkin on the wooden slats of the public table, and a styrofoam cup of instant coffee steaming in his hand.
“There was also an Egyptian pharaoh back in the day, he once said ‘those best suited to obtaining power are the least suited to wielding it’.”
Mr Malcolm-Carter is in his 70s and lives in public housing in Norlane. As a railway officer in Queensland he saw “a lot of people” killed, which caused him to develop depression.
“I come here because my family don’t really understand, and I don’t want to burden them,” he says. “I come and get a coffee and a doughnut, and just enjoy being around the people.”
“There’s not one person here I’ve met here who I can’t find something to like about them. Society looks down on some people because we’re materialistic mostly, and just because somebody might be a little dishevelled or something – I mean we’ve all had a bad day – it doesn’t make them any less of a member of our society, or human being.
“This place is a wonderful institution.”
David Bainbridge was a regular here even before he begun to experience homelessness, typically when the bills were stacking up and builders’ payments to his failing bricklaying business were late – as they so often are in the industry.
Five years later, he’s sleeping rough in Geelong’s CBD, in a safe and sheltered spot he doesn’t wish to publicise, for fear he’ll be kicked out and forced to find somewhere new in the bitter winter chill.
He’s got a unit in Norlane he can sleep in, but his ex-girlfriend is there and he prefers it “back on the streets”.
“I don’t even sleep in the bed when I’m there, too used to sleeping on the ground,” he mumbles.
“I’ve been coming to the Outpost since I’ve been homeless, probably five years, and before that when builders hadn’t paid me for a month or so. I come here and get a hot meal, coffee, sometimes clothes and a couple of times I’ve grabbed the blankets.”
There are plenty of ways to get food in Geelong, some legal, some not, but the reality of The Outpost’s potential closure is bleak, Mr Bainbridge says.
“There will be nowhere to have tea, really, three or four nights a week.”
One of the key reasons for The Outpost’s hunt for a new home looms over it in the clear July chill.
The city’s new Civic Precinct – called Wurriki Nyal – is a six-storey, $102m landmark project, pitched as something of a feather in the cap of the city. It’s almost finished construction, and from the doorway of the Outpost the frozen mass of metal and glowing office lights hulks over the western skyline.
To help “balance upcoming budgets … and invest in priority projects”, the city is selling off surplus assets including the Busport building. And while conditions have been placed on other surplus assets – such as a requirement for a 20-year lease for the Maternal Health Centre to remain at a Belmont asset – there is no current obligation for a new landowner to house the Outpost.
Outpost Relocation Committee co-chair Amy Flint said the group was thankful to the city for providing the Busport space for 20 years for a peppercorn lease, but has been left to hunt for a new centrally-located facility to house the service – a difficult prospect in the booming CBD property market.
“Ultimately, should we not find an alternate venue, our worst-case scenario would be to cease operating which is not ideal, especially for those looking for a hot meal in the evening,” Ms Flint says.
“If we don’t operate there are other services which provide meals three nights a week. But there’s still four nights in every week that people would literally go into the evening hungry, without dinner.”
Despite the stark reality of The Outpost’s housing problem, Amy refuses to believe the worst-case scenario will come true.
“It can’t,” she says. “What will these people do if it does? I can’t accept that.”
Geelong’s acting director of customer and corporate services Karen Olesnicky said the city was providing ongoing support for the Outpost to find a new location.
Outpost volunteer Jean Young is the only remaining original member of the service. She’s tough, sharp and the personification of kindness, as she scoops warm sausages with gravy and vegetables into a container for a hungry customer at the counter.
She’s also well aware of the importance of a service like The Outpost to a rapidly growing city like Geelong.
“I think it means a lot,” she says, between serving up food and tidying up the backroom stocks of hygiene items in large plastic tubs, sleeping bags and other titbits. “We have helped a lot of people here.”
“They know when they come around the corner that there’s a light on, and there’s someone here for them. That’s what’s meant a lot for them too, to have it here in the town.
“I’ve been told by people, ‘if it hadn’t of been for you people I wouldn’t have made it’. They just come and know there’s someone here who will talk to them and be non-judgmental. That’s the big thing.”
Last year Jean and her fellow volunteers served up hot meals to 33,498 attendees at the Outpost.
LES is one of the most popular users of The Outpost.
The 56-year-old former fisherman has been coming down for about seven years to make the most of the food, clothing and many people up for a friendly chat.
He’s squatting in a Geelong West property “near Pako with the beautiful people” at the moment, and is typically set in the corner of the Outpost’s small dining room controlling the TV remote at night. He was also the brains behind the book library set up prior to Covid-19 – mostly featuring his own donated mystery books – before it had to be taken away during the pandemic.
Les is pragmatic about the possibility of facing most nights of each week without easy access to a hot meal in Geelong.
“People will probably go hungry, yeah,” he says. “Christchurch does an evening meal but only two nights a week, so we’ll have the rest of the week to try and scrounge something up.”
Sean – who asked to use a pseudonym – lives in public housing in Geelong West, but Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and living in a rough area means it can be the little things he finds hardest to do himself.
“Since my medical treatment of traumatic memories and things like that, the medicine has done its job – but you still have to do the hard work of getting healthy,” he says, methodically rolling a short cigarette from a pouch of spare tobacco taken from ‘bumpers’ – discarded cigarette butts.
“It’s really hard for me to wash the dishes, it’s really hard for me to cook dinner, but somehow it’s a lot easier coming here. If I sit at home waiting to cook myself dinner it doesn’t happen, I just can’t move. If I go to the Outpost for a charity meal I can walk here somehow.
“I like the part where everyone leaves me alone, down here. A quiet meal is what I need, and to sit in peace and quiet. Where I’m living they’re non-stop screaming at each other, 3am they’ve got the radio pumping and screaming at each other and partying for three days straight, you know. And I can’t get no peace and quiet.”
When asked what he might do if the Outpost closes, Sean pauses to consider his response.
“I don’t know really, but I definitely need the help,” he mumbles. “I’ll probably go hungry more often.”
“I definitely need the help for now. yeah,” he repeats, as his breath, cigarette and steaming styrofoam cup of coffee combine to leave a thick, comforting cloud of fog in the near-freezing winter air.
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Originally published as Save The Outpost: A council move to sell ‘surplus assets’ means a key charity may be forced to close
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