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danieldwilliamReflecting on Andy's recent post about not, not having money, here are some reflections on my own brush with poverty.
When I was twelve my family were run out of a frontier town in northern Australia by gangsters. This is the sort of thing that happens to my family but not, I understand, to most other families in the developed world. To be clear, there was a direct and credible threat that members of my family would be murdered if we did not leave town. We left town. Quickly.
Now this ought not to have been the route in to poorness that it turned out to be. My mother is a doctor, with a pretty top tier career, degrees from prestigious universities, qualifications from world class institutions, decades of experience and skills and knowledge and a reputation to match. My step-father could drive a combine harvester, which is a pretty marketable skill in rural Australia.
We fled to a smaller frontier town in eastern Australia where my step-father had contacts who would put him in the way of some work whilst my mum sorted out some locums in the area to make ends meet whilst we re-grouped. We'd get a house, get a job, get some cash and then get out. We arrived in the worst place I've ever lived in two four-wheel drives towing all our wordly possessions in a caravan and a camping trailer. There were six of us and two dogs. Basically a Jerome K Jerome novel and the sequel - but in the Outback. Three Boys and a Didgerdoo and not forgetting Banjo the Dog.
Things were bad. During the early stages of the run in with the gangsters I think my mum had run through all of her savings. However, we had skills ands social capital and opportunity. Things were going to be okay. Then we didn't. Things got worse. The cotton harvest was flooded out and then a drought struck. My step-father's work dried up. My mum's licence to practise was still restricted in the state we had moved to because she was an immigrant. She couldn't work.
So we lived in the caravan and the camping trailer and a tent through the winter and we ate welfare bananas.
The local Catholic preist had decided we were deserving poor and would drop round every so often with a food bank parcel. He seemed to have some contacts in the banana trade because the parcels always came in banana boxes and usually included more bananas than one might usually eat. The irony was that my grandpa, famously fond of bananas as a young man, had made himself sick on them in 1946 when rationing restrictions were lifted and never ate another banana. I ate his for him.
We had few possessions, very little money to spend, we were cold and unhappy and we looked and felt poor. My brothers and I slept three to a bed in a tent for six months of one of the most unpleasant winters central Australia has seen.
And that is my brush with poverty but not I think an actual experience of poverty. We were poor but we had hope. Soon either my mum or my step-dad would find work that paid well and we'd have a house. Soon after that my mum would sort out a prestigous job with a salary to match. And so it proved. Six months after arriving we left to move to a small city on the north eastern coast of Australia where my mum took up the position of Deputy Director of Radiology. It took a few years for our family finances to recover - hampered by my step-father's almost criminal lack of business acumen - but they recovered and we returned to the prosperous upper middle class lifestyle that we had enjoyed when I was a boy and which I and my children now enjoy.
All through the winter of welfare banana we knew that, come the summer our position would improve. We might have no money now but we were not going to remain poor for forever. Important things for which one needs money were delayed but not permanently. We were not malnourished. University fees were not out of reach. Our entertainments were cheap and only limited by our imaginations and the imaginations of the rural Australians with whom we went to school.
And that I think is the difference between being poor and poverty. Poverty, for me, is the state of being poor now, and having always been poor and being poor in the future with no prospect of improvement. That a constant state of not having enough of the fundamentals of life is the best things are ever going to get. A short period of poorness is pretty bad. You learn habits of thrift that marr your life forever. Even now I wince when I spend money. I don't take risks with my career that would make me happier. My six months homelessness in a caravan park in rural Australia were not just a picturesque annecdote to drop in to conversation now that I'm safe and secure and prosperous in the most middle class city in the world. Like any terrifying situation it scars you.
I was once asked, when I had returned to my home town in Scotland, if I thought the experience of living in Australia had made me any different. I replied, how would I know, I wasn't here to experience growing up in north east Scotland. All I have is the experience of being me in Australia and part of that experience is the experience of being poor and being frightened of staying poor.
Being hungry because there is not enough food. Being mocked because you have no money. Being cold because you have no house. Being dirty because your only bathing facilities are a shared shower room on the other side of a muddy field. Those are things that seep in to the soul and linger. How hellish it would be for that to be your life rather than a brief interlude before your life restarts somewhere warmer I can only imagine. I can imagine them all to well though. I have visited poverty. I did not like it there and I am not going back.
When I was twelve my family were run out of a frontier town in northern Australia by gangsters. This is the sort of thing that happens to my family but not, I understand, to most other families in the developed world. To be clear, there was a direct and credible threat that members of my family would be murdered if we did not leave town. We left town. Quickly.
Now this ought not to have been the route in to poorness that it turned out to be. My mother is a doctor, with a pretty top tier career, degrees from prestigious universities, qualifications from world class institutions, decades of experience and skills and knowledge and a reputation to match. My step-father could drive a combine harvester, which is a pretty marketable skill in rural Australia.
We fled to a smaller frontier town in eastern Australia where my step-father had contacts who would put him in the way of some work whilst my mum sorted out some locums in the area to make ends meet whilst we re-grouped. We'd get a house, get a job, get some cash and then get out. We arrived in the worst place I've ever lived in two four-wheel drives towing all our wordly possessions in a caravan and a camping trailer. There were six of us and two dogs. Basically a Jerome K Jerome novel and the sequel - but in the Outback. Three Boys and a Didgerdoo and not forgetting Banjo the Dog.
Things were bad. During the early stages of the run in with the gangsters I think my mum had run through all of her savings. However, we had skills ands social capital and opportunity. Things were going to be okay. Then we didn't. Things got worse. The cotton harvest was flooded out and then a drought struck. My step-father's work dried up. My mum's licence to practise was still restricted in the state we had moved to because she was an immigrant. She couldn't work.
So we lived in the caravan and the camping trailer and a tent through the winter and we ate welfare bananas.
The local Catholic preist had decided we were deserving poor and would drop round every so often with a food bank parcel. He seemed to have some contacts in the banana trade because the parcels always came in banana boxes and usually included more bananas than one might usually eat. The irony was that my grandpa, famously fond of bananas as a young man, had made himself sick on them in 1946 when rationing restrictions were lifted and never ate another banana. I ate his for him.
We had few possessions, very little money to spend, we were cold and unhappy and we looked and felt poor. My brothers and I slept three to a bed in a tent for six months of one of the most unpleasant winters central Australia has seen.
And that is my brush with poverty but not I think an actual experience of poverty. We were poor but we had hope. Soon either my mum or my step-dad would find work that paid well and we'd have a house. Soon after that my mum would sort out a prestigous job with a salary to match. And so it proved. Six months after arriving we left to move to a small city on the north eastern coast of Australia where my mum took up the position of Deputy Director of Radiology. It took a few years for our family finances to recover - hampered by my step-father's almost criminal lack of business acumen - but they recovered and we returned to the prosperous upper middle class lifestyle that we had enjoyed when I was a boy and which I and my children now enjoy.
All through the winter of welfare banana we knew that, come the summer our position would improve. We might have no money now but we were not going to remain poor for forever. Important things for which one needs money were delayed but not permanently. We were not malnourished. University fees were not out of reach. Our entertainments were cheap and only limited by our imaginations and the imaginations of the rural Australians with whom we went to school.
And that I think is the difference between being poor and poverty. Poverty, for me, is the state of being poor now, and having always been poor and being poor in the future with no prospect of improvement. That a constant state of not having enough of the fundamentals of life is the best things are ever going to get. A short period of poorness is pretty bad. You learn habits of thrift that marr your life forever. Even now I wince when I spend money. I don't take risks with my career that would make me happier. My six months homelessness in a caravan park in rural Australia were not just a picturesque annecdote to drop in to conversation now that I'm safe and secure and prosperous in the most middle class city in the world. Like any terrifying situation it scars you.
I was once asked, when I had returned to my home town in Scotland, if I thought the experience of living in Australia had made me any different. I replied, how would I know, I wasn't here to experience growing up in north east Scotland. All I have is the experience of being me in Australia and part of that experience is the experience of being poor and being frightened of staying poor.
Being hungry because there is not enough food. Being mocked because you have no money. Being cold because you have no house. Being dirty because your only bathing facilities are a shared shower room on the other side of a muddy field. Those are things that seep in to the soul and linger. How hellish it would be for that to be your life rather than a brief interlude before your life restarts somewhere warmer I can only imagine. I can imagine them all to well though. I have visited poverty. I did not like it there and I am not going back.
