Why EJ slept in her car last night... | The Forgotten Women

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
It was a big sleep out on the top car
park of Verbena Town Center. The premise was to sleep
the night in your car to experience homelessness, because women
over fifty five is the highest rate of homelessness in
Australia right now, and in fact, there's around one thousand
Queensland women homeless and the Forgotten Women they actually organize

(00:23):
rent top ups and housing for these women and they're
like a silent minority because they're dignified and they're proud
and they just go and do things like couch surf
and sleep in their cars. And so that's the idea
is to sleep for a night, raise funds and feel
what it is like to be her. And we heard
lots of stories last night and the average age that

(00:43):
the Forgotten Women help are seventy two seventy two years old.
And the stories of us, you know, husbands dying, separation,
elder abuse, things like that and just the cost of
living a pension doesn't cut it anymore. So there was
about one hundred cars there because it was the inaugural
for the Gold Coast, so we were small and mighty.
To put into perspective, the one in Brisbane gets about

(01:04):
four hundred cars, so we've got a little way to go,
and it kind of felt like a big fun sleepover.
There was a really amazing vibe. People decorated the backs
of their cars, you know, they had mattresses in the
back of their cars. People bought camp ovens and cooked soup,
shared cheese platters. There was lots of choky sharing going around.
I want to give a bit of a shout out
to some of our clients who jumped on board a

(01:25):
Karen from Total Property Group was there. Shelley from Magnus
Health and all of Sunshine Forward. They turned up and
they cooked sausages for us all which was wonderful. You
should have played beat the bows. I actually had sausage. Okay,
that's for another time. I don't believe you said that
time women exactly. Anyway, there was lots of listeners as well,

(01:47):
many who came on their own without knowing anyone, and
I was so proud of them. This amazing moment happened
while they all giggled like naughty school boys. There was
this lady that turned up and her name was Michelle
and she's fifty five years old, which is you know,
we thought that was a significant age fifty five is
the age and it was her birthday. She came on
her own on her birthday. So I'm hosting up the front,

(02:10):
and I had to do all of the you know,
the housekeeping and talk to all of the people. And
then I thought, you know, I'll give her a shout out.
I'll get her up and we'll sing happy birthday. But
I didn't know her story. And I get her up
on the microphone, we sing a happy birthday. I said,
why are you here on your own on your birthday?
And she said, I've just oh, I've just beat homelessness.

(02:31):
And so this causes close to my heart. And she
shared her story about how she became homeless and how
she dragged herself out of it and how she had
lived in her car. Anyway, she goes back to a
seat and we go on and we give a prize
to the highest you know, fundraiser and all that kind
of stuff, and then it's time for the Raffle. And
the raffle is a night at the Marriotte and Event Cinemas.
You know whose name I pulled out, No way, I

(02:52):
pulled out Michelle's name. Oh wow, So have your birthday, Michelle.
Thank you for sharing your story, deeply personal story. She
I looked at every single ticket until I saw her name.
No I did not well. Okay, so how did you go?
Sleeping in your car? Okay? So I decided to go
with Millie my daughter. Big mistake. She thought we were

(03:15):
doing the babysitters Club sleepover. She spilled water in the
car just as we were going to sleep. She ate
gluten right beforehand, so she was fighting mcfart pants anyway,
But it was it was really sobering, to be honest.
It felt fun at the beginning, but as you were
going to sleep, it got really cold. My feet were cold.
I couldn't get warm. The lights in the car park,

(03:36):
the noises. It was really hard to sleep. And it
was like got running a marathon. It's a battle with
your brain. I kept thinking I could just go home.
No one's going to know. Everyone knows I've got to
get up early. I'll just go it two. And it
was a real battle to stay there. And then when
the light breaks, like your heart breaks because you just
think this is people's lives. And I could barely get
through one night, and I was able to stock it

(03:58):
with everything I needed. So it was an amazing event,
and please go next year. Let's beat Brisbane. Let's get
like four hundred and one cars. Okay, let's do that.
All right, well I'll add my car. I would love
you too. So many people ask me where you were,
so you really have to take the tomato. I would
love the whole team next year, please, and the whole

(04:18):
team that we did sponsor it and did help, you
know via on air mentions. But next year to tell
them I was home in bed because I had a
good sleep.