Inhabiting the margins: A geography of rural homelessness in Australia

Little is known about the extent, pattern and nature of homelessness in rural Australia, a situation echoed by other authors in this volume in relation to other countries in North America, Europe and the UK. While acknowledging that homelessness does have a spatial or locational dimension, the conventional wisdom is that homelessness is spatially concentrated in 'large cities rather than rural towns and cities; in central city areas rather than suburbs' (Burke, 1994: 33), where numbers are largest and the homeless population more visible. Homelessness in Australia has been typically represented as a metropolitan phenomenon and, as such, rural homelessness has received little specific attention from academics, policy makers or the media. Perhaps this is not surprising in one of the most urbanized countries in the world. Despite this situation, the rural homeless occupy a very special and highly visible role in Australian folklore and mythology. The de facto national anthem, 'Waltzing Matilda' tells the tale of a homeless male sleeping rough by the famed billabong who meets his demise at the hands of the colonial authorities for sheep stealing. Similarly, some of the nation's most famous poetry and painting of the colonial era is centrally concerned with itinerant male labourers (e.g. Lawson's Clancy of the Overflow') and nomadic older homeless men (commonly known as 'swaggies') (e.g.) Fredderick McCubbin's 'Down on His Luck').