Meet Your Vendor
I was born in Victoria, in Bendigo. Mum and Dad died in an accident when I was little – I was only a baby. Me and my sister were sent to live with an aunty. We didn’t get on.
I got put into a foster care place, and then the foster parents came and took me to their house. We moved to Adelaide when I was 15. It was strange. I missed Victoria. I missed all my friends that I grew up with. But now I’m in Adelaide, I’ve got heaps of friends. I don’t know what happened to my sister. I’m looking for her.
Primary school wasn’t much fun, it was boring. I just wanted to go home. I liked going on the school camps and that. High school was better: I liked Home Ec. I’m not a bad cook to this day. I go to cooking classes and I cook every Tuesday, things like macaroni cheese, curried sausages and roast chicken.
I left school when I was 16. I really just hung around at home. I did volunteer work for Mission Australia, a bit of pole sitting to raise money for homelessness.
When I was 18, I left foster care. I just got on with life. I lived in a unit down in Bindon with a friend. And, for about a year when I was a teenager, I was homeless.
I’m in a boarding house now; I’ve been there three years. The staff are caring, and I’ve got quite a lot of friends there. We’ve got fish at the boarding house – I’ve named one of the fish Nemo. As I’ve found, having somewhere to live is important: a roof over my head, three meals a day and getting my room cleaned. And having a TV I can watch any time I want. I like watching Home and Away.
The Big Issue was my first job. I started selling in 2007. A friend of mine told me about it and brought me along to The Big Issue office. It feels good. With the money I get, I can buy myself a cup of coffee or something to eat. And I’ve got money in my pocket all the time, that sort of thing.
I get to meet people, and I sell a lot of magazines. It’s good to meet the public; I have my regular customers who come up and buy one off me every fortnight. And I’ve met a lot of famous people: Mike Rann, the former South Australian premier; Julia Gillard; and Anthony from The Wiggles. I try to be nice to everyone. That’s how I got brought up.
I like to socialise with friends. I go to the movies, I like going to dances (I’m pretty good), I go out and watch football – my team is Port Power, we’re doing pretty good this year – and on the weekends I go to Central Market, have a cup of coffee.
If I earn enough money, I’d like to go back to Victoria for a holiday, see if anything’s changed over there. I know the hospital I was born in is still there, I know that.
Adrian sells The Big Issue at Europcar on North Terrace, Adelaide
Interview by Amy Hetherington
Photo by Ben Liew
Published in ed#737