Hey Mate, You can’t park there.

Cafe Locked Out On The Run

The ocean seems to need something it can’t find in its womb. It sends its waves up the beach, trying to invade or at least gain a reaction from the land where the seagulls wait and watch. Then, as the moon pulls on its collar, it sulks back to reconfigure before attempting to do it all again. It was night now. Most of us would miss the coming assault.

“This barbeque works and so does that one over there,” the old guy pointed, before coming back to me and saying, “and you can’t stay here. In the morning the rangers will be around and they’ll stick $100 spot fines on your windscreen.”

The Bunbury council had been spending a fortune on these beach carparks. They had new playgrounds, barbeques, arty-looking sunshades, and no room for all the homeless people haunting the corners of their streets, their heavy heads glancing up to watch other people—who were trying not to see them—pass.

This man’s name was Geoff. He was living in his van and knew the landscape well.

As I asked him questions about his current situation, he kept reeling off other places we could stay. Some had toilets that remained open all night, but most, like these ones, were locked in the evenings.

There is No Room For US. Interview with an old woman living in a shed. Audio Only

Around Australia, as the housing crisis deepens, we come across councils installing barricades that prevent access to car parks after 6 or 7 pm.

He also knew about the mother living with two children in a tent under a bridge. We had heard about her from two sources but as yet were unable to find her.

He was eating from a bowl half full of couscous, and as he was giving his advice, Kel could see him glancing at our sausages sizzling on the barbeque.

“You want one?” I asked.

“No no no,” he said, but Kel didn’t listen and filled his bowl with sausages.

He’d been living in one place, they’d told him they had to sell, so he moved out. And since then he’d been unable to find another.

I told him about another man I had spoken to. He was also homeless and his trolley full of gear had been parked near a supermarket. He told me he’d been on the emergency housing list for four years, but recently, when he’d gone in to see how he was progressing, they’d told him that due to a policy change they’d scrubbed the list and he would have to reapply.

When he asked why he wasn’t told, the woman had cited their zero-tolerance, no-aggression policy.

“Four years,” he’d said to me. “Four years.”

Then he claimed they were giving the houses to the new migrants. Another man, also homeless, concurred.

“So Geoff, will you stay here tonight?” I asked.

“No, I can’t afford the fines. I’m just here to eat. “How old are you?” I asked.

“Seventy-seven.”

“Seventy-seven… but what are you going to do if you get sick and need caring for? Do you have anyone who would?”

Briefly he looked around, then back at our vehicles. He looked at them for a long time before saying once again, “You shouldn’t stay here. They’ll fine you.”

And with that he drifted off back to his van and then he was gone.

Did I mention he looked like he’d been living in his clothes for weeks? The ocean was back. I could hear it pounding on the rocks just over the rise.

Wave after wave searching for something—something perhaps forever lost—as our sausages sizzled, Kel and I, after a brief discussion about their fines, agreed to move on.

~Michael

Bunbury WA 6/6/26

If you would like to support the work of Kelli and I, Café Locked Out, perhaps you would considered taking out a aid subscription, or purchasing our Book.

Goodbye Road. (Published by A sense of Place Publishing)

Goodbye Road, a novel built on the Orphans of Goodbye Road

“The collection’s greatest achievement lies in its preservation of voices that would otherwise vanish into silence.

Griffith interviews hundreds of Australians whose stories the mainstream media won’t touch: nurses who faked vaccination records for their families, doctors who secretly admit vaccine injuries while publicly maintaining silence, workers who lost careers spanning decades for refusing a medical procedure.

His essay “Australia: The Great Silence” crystallizes this suppression through a single conversation with a paramedic whose brother died after vaccination.

The man refuses to go on record, fearing for his family’s employment, yet spends an hour pouring out details that contradict every official narrative—the explosion in myocarditis cases, the young trainees dying suddenly, the fertility clinic overwhelmed with stillbirths.

Griffith becomes the repository for these dangerous truths, carrying them in his interviews until he can release them into the world, understanding that without his documentation, these testimonies would die with their witnesses.”

~Frank Paul

Full Review

https://unbekoming.substack.com/…/goodbye-road-by

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