A bloke I sit near at work has an aversion to catching public transport.
It simply does not meet his standards, or so he says. Recently, every journey he undertakes has become a mythologised office tale of "grotty" homeless people or "slutty" prostitutes that he has had to sit near. In some moments the language and the attitude make my blood boil. In others I try to reflect on what insecurities might be behind this judgemental attitude (and further, on the hypocrisy of my own judgements levelled at this public transport defeatist.)
Then one day he tells me he is buying a brand new Volvo and I get my back up again.
Maybe all this has made my blood boil a bit more vigorously than usual because I’ve been reading about a gentleman named Bryan Lipmann.
Bryan is the boss at Wintringham Aged Care in Melbourne. It is his organisation in every sense of the word. Wintringham only exists because of Bryan. He founded it with the idea that homeless people deserve the same level of care and support in their old age as the rest of the community. Indeed, Bryan wants them to have it even better. I have read him telling critics that he wants the people his organisation supports to have Rolls Royce service. Given the lives they have had it is the least they deserve.
I have become obsessed with this former economics student who left town to become a jackaroo, only to eventually return and work in homeless shelters. It was there the idea for Wintringham was born. I wonder who he spoke to there, fellow travellers on the margins of the 1980s 'greed is good' society. What he was thinking as he worked with and for these men and women?
I have to ask him. However, I still haven’t met Bryan. Meeting him is now one of my goals.
I’ve read about his life, rifled through his resumé and read letters from referees who support his nomination for a national aged care services award. I reckon Bryan should win. I’m biased though. Not because I helped write the application, but because Bryan made me remember someone and something I’d forgotten. Something I promised myself I wouldn’t forget.
When you have kids, move to the country and start to build a house you forget things. A decade is a long time. Time enough for economics students to ride the cattle rough across