Stories

Did you know that cameleers from present-day Afghanistan, Pakistan and India helped to found Perth’s oldest mosque?

It took eighteen years for women to have a dedicated residential college to live in as they undertook their studies.

It was half a century ago that Perth musicians developed a culturally isolated and unique punk sound. Western Australia’s music scene would never be the same.

“If you know of people who are living on the street, it’s not just about picking them up and putting them in four walls and a roof. The sustainment of help and community service runs for years after that because of what you don’t see that they’ve been through.”

“We know that the definition of homelessness is living in an unstable environment – living in a place where you don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, living in a place where you don’t know if you’re welcome.”

“Because she’s everywhere I go – homelessness lives in my shadow. It used to be that every decision I made was soaked in the idea of avoiding it. But now I know better – I know that there are no good choices and bad choices, there is just misfortune. I am a highly educated, intelligent woman who made every right choice, and even I couldn’t avoid her.”

“People tell me how much they admire me, how the trauma made me strong and resilient, but it didn’t. It stole the light from my eyes, energy that I needed and could have been spending on other things. It made me weak, exhausted, distrustful, anxious, and unwell. It broke me. Because who are you without a place to call home?”

“Hopelessness is death – whether it leads us to physical death or death of soul and spirit. But what was a hopeless situation can be turned around, but only when community stands together, when those gaps in our system are filled, and there is no reason for, in a country like this one, for us to have the homelessness crisis that we do.”

"When I think of the Centre for Stories, two Māori concepts come to mind: manaakitanga and whanaungatanga. Manaakitanga is the process of showing respect, generosity and care for others while whanaungatanga is a relationship that’s developed through shared experiences and ultimately results in a shared sense of belonging."