Two things surprised me this morning while cycling in the parkway. The first was a tree snake that fell out of a tree and flopped onto the grass right beside me in Idalia. The second was a homeless man smoking a cigarette in the underpass beneath the Bowen Road bridge.

My response to the snake was “Oh, cool!” and I immediately stopped my bike and turned to observe the dark-backed, green-bellied snake slither speedily across the paved path and into tall riverside grasses. It was, I believe, a green tree snake, also called a common tree snake, and it had injected my otherwise sedate cycling excursion with a dose of reptilian zest.

I was in Idalia to find some charm, some photographic gem, and thus make a liar of myself, since I had written last week that the Idalia section of the Ross River Parkway possessed none of the spacious beauty of other sections of the parkway and in fact looked rather squashed. I didn’t find it squashed today. I found it young. A number of the new boxy houses lining an adjacent street were in various phases of construction, and the trees bordering the path were mere striplings when contrasted to the mature mangos and rain trees near Aplins Weir. So, my comparison was hardly fair. And I did find the charm I sought, in a view across the Ross River to soaring palms on the far side, and in schoolboys chatting while they cycled to school in their uniforms. As I discovered in Bicentennial Park two weeks ago, beauty is where you look for it.

My response to the homeless man was momentary alarm followed by concern. His face looked haggard as he sat smoking, his back resting against the bridge support, a blue plastic milk crate on the cement beside him. Last week, Vilis told me that he had seen a homeless man sleeping under the bridge when he cycled to work. I wondered if I’d seen the same individual.

On returning home, I went online and learned that a 2009 Queensland homelessness census indicated that Townsville had 1329 homeless individuals and Cairns had close to 1400.¹ Overall, numbers of homeless people were strikingly higher in North Queensland as compared to more southern communities in the state.¹ Age demographics showed that 49% of Queensland’s homeless were 35 or older, almost a quarter were 55 or older, and 16% were in the age group of 12-18 years.¹ A disproportionate number of homeless individuals were Aboriginals or Torres Strait Islanders.¹

The webpage for FEAT, the acronym for Family Emergency Accommodation Townsville, stated that lower income families in this city have four strikes against them when it comes to finding accommodation: 1) Townsville’s chronic lack of affordable housing, 2) extremely low vacancy rates (less than 2%), 3) tenancy blacklisting, and 4) discrimination in the rental market against Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders, which comprise 5% of Townsville’s population, but make up 35-40% of those seeking aid from FEAT.²

Both FEAT and the Red Cross work with low income families to offer preventative and support programs for those in danger of becoming homeless or who are ‘sleeping rough,’^{2, 3} and the non-governmental agency Life is More runs a Homeless Services Hub on Flinders Street west near the downtown mall.⁴ Just two weeks ago, Townsville’s city council threw the homeless ball to the state government, requesting funding for a short-term accommodation complex and detoxification-rehabilitation centre to break the back of homelessness in the city.⁵ May the dollars come and the plan succeed.

References:

1. Homelessness Australia. Counting the Homeless State/Territory Report, Queensland Summary. 9 July 2009. Accessed 2-Mar-2010. Google: Counting the Homeless 2006 QLD Summary-2.doc

2. F.E.A.T. Family Homelessness in Townsville. © 2007 F.E.A.T – Family Emergency Accommodation Townsville. Accessed 2-Mar-2010. http://www.feat.org.au/information.php

3. Australian Red Cross Queensland Services. Homelessness Early Intervention Program. © 2010 Australian Red Cross. Accessed 2-Mar-2010. http://www.redcross.org.au/QLD/fsp_hei.htm

4.Community Directory. Life is More – Townsville Homeless Hub. Accessed 2-Mar-2010. http://apps.townsville.qld.gov.au/directory/_orgdetails.asp?OrganisationID=3007#top

5. Andrew Strutton. Council backs Last’s stand on homeless. Townsville Bulletin, February 13, 2010. © January 2007 The North Queensland Newspaper Company Pty Ltd. Accessed 2-Mar-2010. http://www.townsvillebulletin.com.au/article/2010/02/13/114985_news.html