Allan ‘Big Al’

“Imagine going from living the great Australian dream with your beautiful family one minute to your 37-year-old wife, soulmate, and mother of your two daughters being advised quite matter-of-factly to go home and get your affairs in order because you have stage four bowel cancer metastasized to the liver the next,” Allan says.

“With the prognosis of around three months to live, I would think it is bound to take its toll on anybody’s mental health.

“It led me to being admitted to a mental health unit.”

“From that moment, having to make tough financial decisions, trying to find alternative therapies to prolong Dawn’s life, AND trying to keep a roof over our heads began to compound existing health problems for us both.

“This eventually led to me being admitted to a mental health unit, stood over whilst I was heavily medicated and then when you think you can cope again, having to navigate a totally unfamiliar social support network in order to access crisis housing and support networks.

“I live in constant chronic pain.”

“Sleeping in cars, on people’s couches, and in strange beds wreaked havoc with my already damaged spine from a previous car accident and I became addicted to pain killers and anti-inflammatories and where to this day, some fourteen years later. I live in constant chronic pain and have been registered as disabled by Centrelink.

“I am one of the lucky ones though, I never slept on the street, but given the level of discomfort I still suffer to this day, weight gain, mood swings, anxiety, high blood pressure, I can only imagine, how bad it could have really gotten if I had to sleep on park benches, cold concrete floors, inhabitable buildings, and unsafe parks and gardens.

“I now advocate for the homeless and homelessness prevention, knowing that it is far more cost-effective to prevent homelessness and the associated health costs that homelessness creates.”