Nourish Street Inc

06/09/2026

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STREET

From Addiction and Homelessness to Nourish Street

By Beau Haywood

CHAPTER 27

ALMOST AT ROCK BOTTOM
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A note before you read: These memoirs deal with addiction, homelessness, loss, trauma and some very dark periods of my life. Some details have been left out due to their deeply personal nature and to protect the privacy of others.
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After finding out about my son, we both moved in with Jenny. Her townhouse wasn't really suitable for all of us, so we found a larger place to rent and tried to make a home together.

My bus sat on the front lawn for a while, but eventually I had to accept that it was time to let her go. For years I had imagined travelling around Australia in that bus, going wherever I wanted and living on the road. Now I had a young son to think about, and those plans were going on the back burner for at least another sixteen years. I sold the bus and bought an old Mitsubishi Triton ute instead.

I wish I could say that becoming responsible for my son was the moment I finally took responsibility for my own life. I wish it had been enough to make me stop using dr%g$ and become the father and partner my family needed me to be.

It wasn't.

My substance use continued to increase, and I spent a lot of time trying to hide it from Jenny. I had stash spots around the house that I thought were clever. They weren't. Jenny would eventually find what I had hidden and confront me about it. Every discovery damaged the trust between us a little more.

Her lack of trust was completely understandable, although at the time I couldn't seem to understand it. My thinking was so distorted that I could lie to her, get caught and then become frustrated when she questioned me later. I wanted her to believe me while continually giving her reasons not to.

Around this time, I started buying old broken lawnmowers, repairing them and selling them. It turned out to be quite lucrative, and because of the problems with my hands, it was something I could do at my own pace. On good days I could work on them, and when my hands were giving me trouble, I could stop. I enjoyed taking something somebody else had given up on, finding what was wrong with it and getting it running again.

Unfortunately, I wasn't doing the same thing with myself.

After another year of my bull$h!t, Jenny reached her limit.

I had broken her heart. Again.

I can still remember her tears. This was the woman who had stood beside me through years of addiction, lies, excuses and broken promises, and I had hurt her again. Seeing what I had done to her made me feel absolutely worthless. I hated myself with a passion, but even that wasn't enough to make me stop.

Jenny kicked me out.

I couldn't take my son with me when I had nowhere suitable for him to live. Child Safety became involved, and my dr%g use and behaviour were brought to the attention of authorities. My son was placed in the care of my sister, and I wasn't allowed to see him.

When I first discovered my son existed, one of the things that mattered most to me was giving him some stability. His birth mother had been dealing with her own addiction issues, and I had wanted to protect him from that uncertainty.

Now I was the one creating turmoil in his life.

Most of my family stopped having contact with me, although my two eldest sons continued to call. Jenny changed the locks and blocked my calls.

It happened overnight.

One day I had a home, Jenny, my son, my dog and my family around me. The next, I was sitting in my Triton trying to work out where I was going to sleep.

That was when the dark thoughts really took hold. I reached a point where I didn't care whether I lived or died.

The black dog had come for a good long visit.

Before I completely disappeared, I tried to get help.

I called the Homeless Hotline and emergency accommodation services. I explained that I had nowhere to live and needed somewhere to go. I thought there must be some kind of crisis accommodation available, or at least somebody who could tell me what I was supposed to do next.

Instead, I got referrals.

One service referred me to another. That service gave me another number, which led to another organisation and another referral. Sometimes, after working my way through several calls, I ended up back at a service I had already contacted.

I was going around in circles.

I wasn't expecting anyone to fix my life for me. I knew I had played a huge part in creating the situation I was in. I just needed somewhere safe to sleep.

I couldn't find it.

As my mental state deteriorated, I rang a mental health support number for people in crisis. Making that call wasn't easy.

The phone rang and rang.

Eventually, an answering service picked up and told me nobody was available. There was no option to leave my details or request a call back.

Then the call ended.

I sat there staring at my phone.

After enough phone calls and enough referrals, I quickly lost hope. Eventually I stopped calling.

If I couldn't find somewhere to go, I would find somewhere to hide.

I turned my phone off and went bush.

My family became concerned enough to report me missing to police, but I didn't want to be found.

My substance use became heavier, and with the dr%g$ came very little sleep. Combined with the emotional stress I was under, my mind eventually couldn't cope anymore.

I began experiencing psychosis.

I became convinced my phone was being tracked. Even with it turned off, I was suspicious of it. At night, I would look into the sky and see stars that appeared to move or shake. In my mind, they weren't stars anymore. I became convinced they were drones watching me and tracking my movements.

I would stare into the darkness trying to work out what was real and what wasn't, but I could no longer tell the difference. If a light appeared to move, my mind gave it meaning. Someone knew where I was. Someone was watching me.

None of it was real, but the fear certainly was.

The paranoia pushed me towards places where I thought nobody would find me. At times, that meant underground drains.

They were filthy, damp and infested with mosquitoes. There was nowhere to shower or properly wash my clothes, but none of that seemed as important as staying hidden.

Eventually, I found an abandoned house where I could stay for a while. It gave me a roof, but it wasn't safe. At night, kids would sometimes come into the property and smash holes in the walls and break windows. When I heard them inside, I would climb into the roof cavity and hide, staying as quiet as I could until they were gone.

I would lie above the ceiling in the darkness listening to every sound below me, afraid to move in case somebody heard me. Between the real danger downstairs and the danger my mind was creating outside, hiding in a roof cavity somehow made sense.

Eventually, I bought a swag, I moved from park to park, and eventually i set it up on the back of the Triton.
I found an abandoned shed and parked the ute inside it. I barely wanted to drive anywhere because the psychosis had convinced me that being seen meant being found.

That became home.

Not long before, I had owned a forty foot bus that I had converted into a home. It had a bed, a kitchen, electricity and almost everything I needed. I had once planned to travel around Australia in it.

Now I was sleeping in a swag on the back of an old Triton inside an abandoned shed.

Without the relative comfort and security the bus had once provided, I learned how quickly basic things become important when you don't have them. A shower. A toilet. Clean clothes. Somewhere safe enough to sleep.

There had been other terrible periods in my life, but until then I had always managed to keep some part of my life functioning. This time, I couldn't.

My world had narrowed to getting through each day. I wasn't thinking about next month or next year. I wasn't thinking much beyond the next few hours.

Looking back, I can see that I didn't arrive there because of one terrible decision. It had taken years of addiction, lies, ignored warnings, wasted chances and broken promises to bring me to that abandoned shed.

There I was, lying in a swag on the back of an old Triton, with my mind no longer able to separate fear from reality.

I thought there couldn't possibly be any further to fall.

I was wrong.
I was almost at rock bottom.

To be continued.......

( for previous chapters, scroll back on this page)

05/09/2026

💙 Happy Father’s Day to every father figure in a child’s life. 💙

Today we celebrate not only dads, but also stepdads, grandfathers, uncles, foster dads, carers, mentors and every incredible man who chooses to show up, guide, protect and love a child as their own.

Fatherhood isn’t defined by blood alone. It is found in the time you give, the lessons you teach, the laughter you share and the quiet moments when you simply stay.

To every father figure making a child feel safe, supported and deeply loved—today, we honour and appreciate you.

Happy Father’s Day. You matter more than you may ever realise. 💙

05/09/2026

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STREET
From Addiction and Homelessness to Nourish Street
By Beau Haywood

CHAPTER 26
MY SURPRISE CHILD
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A note before you read: These memoirs deal with addiction, homelessness, loss, trauma and some very dark periods of my life. Some details have been left out due to their deeply personal nature and to protect the privacy of others.
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During my period of medical incapacity in 2020, I was running amok. Without work giving me structure or purpose, I had even more time to disappear into the chaos I had created around myself. I was doing whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, and with whoever I chose. Addiction was still controlling a huge part of my life, and consequences were usually something I worried about after they arrived.

During this time, I had a friend with whom I occasionally had casual encounters. There was never a proper relationship between us, and eventually we went our separate ways, largely because she was struggling with significant addiction issues of her own. Months passed without us seeing each other. Life moved on, or at least I thought it had.

Then one day I was scrolling through Facebook and came across a post she had made. She was asking for recommendations for a suitable daycare for her two-year-old son. I read it again. Two-year-old son? As far as I knew, she didn't have one.

I sent her a message asking, "What two-year-old have you got?"

Her reply immediately made my stomach turn.

"I didn't want you to find out like this."

Find out what?

Then a photograph appeared on my phone. I can still remember staring at that little face. For a moment, everything around me disappeared. Looking back at me was a little boy who looked almost identical to photographs of me at the same age. The resemblance was so strong that I almost dropped my phone. I kept staring at the picture, trying to process something my brain hadn't caught up with yet. I knew what she was about to tell me before she even said it.

That little boy could be my son.

I didn't know whether to be angry, devastated, terrified or excited. I think I felt all of it at once. One minute I had been mindlessly scrolling through Facebook. The next I was looking into the face of a child who may have carried my blood for nearly two years without me knowing he existed.

Nearly two years.

That was the part that really hit me. While I had been carrying on with my life, somewhere out there my little boy had been born. Someone had held him for the first time. He had cried, smiled, crawled, learned to stand and eventually taken his first steps. He had started developing his own little personality. He had celebrated birthdays. There had been nights when he was sick, mornings when he woke up smiling and hundreds of ordinary moments that make up the beginning of a child's life.

And I had missed every single one of them. Not because I had chosen to walk away. Because I hadn't known.

Apparently, after we had parted ways, she had discovered she was pregnant. She carried the pregnancy and gave birth without telling me there was a possibility the child was mine. She told me there had been uncertainty about whether she might place him for adoption, and for reasons that belong to her, she had decided not to tell me.

The thought that my son could have been adopted without me ever knowing he existed was incredibly difficult to process. Addiction had made me selfish, unreliable and destructive in many areas of my life, and I make no excuses for that. But being addicted did not mean I didn't love my children. My sons have always occupied a part of me that addiction could never completely destroy. Whatever condition I was in, had I known there was a possibility this little boy was mine, I would have wanted the chance to be his father.

A photograph wasn't proof, though, no matter how much he looked like me. A paternity test was arranged.

Then came the result.

He was mine.

There is something difficult to describe about finding out you have a child who is already nearly two years old. Normally, becoming a father gives you time to prepare, even if you never truly feel ready. You hear about the pregnancy. You watch the belly grow. You wait for the birth. Then suddenly there is this tiny person in your arms and you begin figuring it out from the beginning.

I didn't get any of that. I became his father almost two years late.

There was happiness in discovering him, but there was grief as well. I had gained a son and, at exactly the same moment, learned how much of his life I had already lost. I couldn't go backwards. I couldn't hold him as a newborn. I couldn't hear his first laugh for the first time. I couldn't watch him take his first step. Those moments were gone forever.

All I could control was whether I missed what came next.

As I became involved in his life, my happiness at discovering him quickly became mixed with concern. I began seeing the environment he was living in, and what I saw frightened me.

I won't describe everything. Some parts of this story are extremely painful and deeply personal. More importantly, they are part of my son's story as much as mine. One day, when he is old enough, he can decide what parts of his childhood he wants people to know. I won't make that decision for him.

What I can say is that, from my perspective, the conditions were putrid. I became increasingly concerned about neglect, instability and the environment surrounding this little boy I had only just discovered was mine.

Initially, I tried to help. I cleaned up the mess. I provided money. I paid overdue rent in an attempt to keep a roof over their heads. I tried giving advice and offering practical support. Some of those efforts were interpreted as me trying to control the situation, but I wasn't interested in controlling another adult. I was looking at my son and wondering what would happen to him if nobody stepped in.

At the same time, Jenny and I had started talking again. That meant I had another conversation I desperately didn't want to have. After everything I had already put her through, I had to tell her that while we had been apart, another child had entered my life.

My child.

Understandably, Jenny was hurt. Once again, I had brought another consequence of my chaotic behaviour back into her world. She had already endured years of my addiction, lies, selfish decisions and instability. Now, just as we were beginning to communicate again, I arrived carrying another enormous complication.

There was no clever explanation that could make it easier. I had a two-year-old son.

But there was something different about this situation. Standing in the middle of all the adult hurt and dysfunction was a little boy who had done absolutely nothing wrong.

We attempted co-parenting, but it became extremely difficult. There was instability, unreliability and constant uncertainty. I kept trying to help financially, but eventually another call came. His mother had lost her employment again and was facing homelessness. Once again, money was needed to stop everything from collapsing.

By then, I had reached my limit. I wasn't prepared to keep throwing money at a situation that never seemed to become stable. More importantly, my son wasn't going to keep paying the price for decisions being made around him.

I made my position clear.

She might become homeless. My son wouldn't.

He had somewhere to go.

With me.

Even if that somewhere was a converted bus.

The irony wasn't lost on me. I was hardly living the stable family life anyone would imagine for a two-year-old child. I was medically unable to work, living in a bus and still deeply caught in addiction. My own life was far from healthy.

But that bus was my home. And if my little boy needed it, then it was his home too.

I knew I wasn't perfect. I knew I had enormous problems of my own. But I also knew I couldn't stand by and watch my son potentially enter foster care while I was alive and capable of putting a roof over his head.

There is much more to what happened during this period. Some of it is too painful to put onto these pages. There are parts involving my son, his birth mother, Jenny and me that will remain private. Not every wound needs to become a story for strangers to read.

But one part deserves to be told.

Jenny.

When Jenny met my little boy, she could have looked at him and seen everything I had done wrong. She didn't. She saw a two-year-old child.

And they hit it off almost immediately.

I watched this woman, whom I had already hurt more times than I care to admit, put those feelings aside because there was a little boy who needed someone. She understood that if I didn't take responsibility for him, there was a very real possibility that he could end up in foster care. Neither of us was prepared to allow that to happen.

Jenny opened her heart and her home to him. And somehow, despite everything I had put her through, she opened them to me as well.

What happened next says more about Jenny than anything I could ever write.

She took that little boy on as her own. There was no biological obligation. There was no reason she had to accept responsibility for another consequence of my chaotic life. She could have walked away from the entire situation and nobody could reasonably have blamed her.

Instead, she became his mum.

She gave him routine when his life had known instability. She gave him a safe home. She fed him, bathed him, dressed him, comforted him, disciplined him, laughed with him and loved him. She was there for the ordinary moments that nobody takes photographs of, the moments that actually build a childhood.

She didn't just tolerate my son because she loved me. She loved him because of who he was.

That distinction matters.

I had discovered my son through a photograph on Facebook. Jenny discovered him through her heart.

His birth mother is no longer part of his life. The circumstances surrounding that are complicated and painful, and they will remain private. My responsibility is to protect my son, not to publicly reopen every part of his childhood. What matters is that he grew up knowing stability, safety and love.

To this day, Jenny continues to be the best mother this boy could ever have asked for.

Sometimes I think back to that Facebook post and wonder how differently everything could have turned out. What if I hadn't been scrolling that day? What if I hadn't seen it? What if I hadn't asked that one question?

"What two-year-old have you got?"

A few words changed the direction of several lives.

I will always carry sadness for the first two years I missed. There are memories between a father and son that I can never create because their time has already passed. Addiction stole enough years from me, but discovering that I had unknowingly missed almost two years of my child's life carried a different kind of pain.

I couldn't change that. What I could do was make sure he never again had to grow up without knowing his dad wanted him.

At that stage of my life, I was still a mess. I was still addicted. I was still making terrible decisions, and there were darker chapters ahead. Discovering my son didn't magically fix me. But he gave me something else to love.

And perhaps the greatest gift in this entire painful chapter wasn't what I did. It was what Jenny did.

After all the hurt I had caused her, she looked at an innocent little boy who arrived unexpectedly in both our lives and made a decision that helped change his future. She chose to love him. She chose to protect him. She chose to become his mum.

And when I think about the life he could have had compared with the life she helped give him, there are some debts of gratitude that I know I will never be able to repay.

To be continued.....

(For previous chapters, scroll back on this page)

05/09/2026

“Thanks for all that you do for us.”

“This will be my first Father’s Day without my children.”

Two comments from tonight’s outreach that probably explain better than I ever could what Nourish Street is really about.

It’s never really been about the food.

It’s about the connection. The “Hey bro, how are you doing?” The check ins. The conversations. Knowing someone’s name, asking how their week has been and making sure people know they haven’t been forgotten.

Behind every meal we hand out is a huge community of people who donate, volunteer, cook, share our posts and support what we do. The people we visit might not get to meet all of you, but they know you’re there and they know people care.

Tonight we distributed 187 roast chicken, roast pork and veggie dinners across Pine Rivers and Redcliffe.

Our Redcliffe crew was David, Toni and Nurse Practitioner Andrea, who also attended to three medical issues tonight.

Pine Rivers was Nurse Practitioner Vivian, Nurse Practitioner Kelly, who joined us for her very first outreach tonight, and myself.

A massive thank you to Compassion for Community for preparing 200 meals for us to distribute tonight, our Nourish Street Inc volunteers for preparing the desserts, Carby’s Bakehouse for the pies and sweet treats, and every single person who donates, shares our posts and supports our work and our community.

Food might be what gets us out there, but human connection is what Nourish Street Inc is really about.

That concludes our outreach until Tuesday night.

Have a fantastic weekend, and Happy Father’s Day tomorrow to all the dads out there, including the ones who, for whatever reason, won’t get to spend it with their kids. ❤️

Beau.

05/09/2026

04/09/2026

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STREET
From Addiction and Homelessness to Nourish Street
By Beau Haywood

CHAPTER 25
MEDICAL INCAPACITY
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A note before you read: These memoirs deal with addiction, homelessness, loss, trauma and some very dark periods of my life. Some details have been left out due to their deeply personal nature and to protect the privacy of others.
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Back from Vietnam, it was back to the bus and back to work. By this point, I had been with the water company for around five years and living in my bus for roughly two. Vietnam had been an incredible escape, but when I returned, so did something I had been trying to ignore for quite some time.

My hands were failing me.

It started gradually, with pins and needles, tingling and numbness. Sometimes my hands would turn red, while other times they would become almost white. Initially, the symptoms came and went, but eventually they became more constant. I would wake during the night with completely numb hands and have to shake them and move my fingers just to get some feeling back.

I went backwards and forwards to doctors trying to find the cause. I had multiple tests and scans of my neck, back and clavicle before eventually undergoing nerve conductivity testing on my wrists. Finally, I had an answer.

Severe carpal tunnel syndrome.

Considering the work I had done for years, it wasn't difficult to understand how my wrists had taken such a beating. Turning stubborn valves, gripping spanners, pulling on tools and repetitive heavy fitting work had been part of my everyday life.

By the time I was diagnosed, it was affecting almost everything I did. Working with tools became dangerous because I couldn't always feel how tightly I was gripping something. Motorcycles had always been one of my greatest escapes, but riding became difficult. Playing guitar, lifting weights and even ordinary activities were becoming frustrating.

These weren't just hobbies to me. They were parts of who I was, and slowly they were being taken away.

WorkCover accepted the initial claim, and I underwent surgery on both wrists. The relief was almost immediate. After living with constant tingling and numbness, being able to properly feel my hands again was incredible. I genuinely believed the problem had been fixed.

Unfortunately, it hadn't.

Before long, the symptoms returned. I raised the problem with work, expecting that because it was essentially the same condition, there would be some understanding. This time, the response was very different. My workplace wasn't nearly as supportive, and neither was WorkCover.

Eventually, I was let go because of "medical incapacity."

Two words ended a career I had spent years building.

I had started an adult apprenticeship later than most and worked hard to prove myself. I had travelled around Australia, worked in water and sewage treatment plants, climbed into confined spaces and worked in environments most people would never want to enter. I had developed skills I was proud of. I knew how to pull machinery apart, diagnose problems and put things back together again.

Being a mechanical fitter had become part of my identity.

I also felt betrayed. I believed my workplace actively worked against my second WorkCover claim. As I have mentioned previously, I had experienced bullying and the "purple circle" mentality within that workplace. Certain people seemed protected and favoured, while others weren't. I had worked in plenty of rough environments with difficult personalities throughout my career, but nothing compared with the toxicity I experienced there.

The next couple of years became an exhausting cycle of appointments, specialists, testing and waiting through the public health system. Eventually, the testing confirmed severe carpal tunnel syndrome again. The original operations had not solved the problem.

I underwent further procedures, including what was described to me as extended carpal tunnel surgery, with a protective fat flap placed around the nerve. By the time the entire ordeal was finished, I had undergone five operations.

For almost a year during this period, I had no income. Because of my New Zealand citizenship status at the time, I wasn't eligible for the government benefits I needed. Thankfully, I had permanent disability insurance, and eventually I received a payout.

I was also incredibly grateful for my bus. Without it, there is little doubt in my mind that I could have ended up living in a tent. It wasn't a conventional home, but during one of the most uncertain periods of my life, those four walls protected me.

My career as a mechanical fitter was over, and my wrists would never return to what they once were. Even today, motorcycles, guitar, lifting weights and other activities can still aggravate them.

Back then, I didn't handle that reality well.

For most of my adult life, I had been someone who worked with his hands. I fixed things, built things and solved problems. There was pride in knowing I could walk into a difficult situation and figure out what needed to be done.

Suddenly, I didn't know what I was supposed to do next.

That loss of purpose affected me more deeply than I admitted at the time. I became depressed, isolated, frustrated and bitter. I spent far too much time alone in the bus, thinking about what had happened and wondering what my future was going to look like.

When I didn't want to think anymore, I already knew how to switch my brain off.

Substances.

During this period, my addiction reached a completely different level. My use went from once or twice a day to around eight points a day at its worst. I was using throughout the day, every day, and my tolerance had become so high that it took increasingly larger amounts to achieve the effect I wanted.

By then, I wasn't chasing a good time.

I was chasing numbness.

I wanted to escape the feelings of failure, anger and uncertainty. But substances don't remove those feelings. They postpone them while quietly creating more problems around you.

My world became smaller. I withdrew from much of my family, although my children were different. Whatever condition I was in, I always did my best to maintain time with them. I wasn't always the father I wish I had been during those years, but I loved my children deeply, and being their dad was something I desperately tried to hold onto.

When I did feel sociable, I often surrounded myself with the wrong people. Relationships came and went, and I sabotaged many of them through addiction, selfishness and destructive behaviour.

The best way I can describe myself during this period is a cyclone. I was standing in the middle while everyone around me was being hit by the debris.

People who cared about me were hurt. Relationships were damaged and trust disappeared. I created chaos and often convinced myself everyone else was the problem. The painful truth is that sometimes I didn't care about the impact I was having.

Everything became about what I wanted, how I felt and what I needed at that particular moment.

Stuff everyone else.

Looking back now, that's difficult to admit. Depression, addiction and what happened with my career help explain how I reached that point, but they don't excuse the damage I caused. There were good people around me who didn't deserve the version of me they received.

For years, I had been able to pull apart broken machinery, find the problem and work out how to repair it. That was something I understood.

I didn't understand how to do the same thing with myself.

I had lost a career I was proud of, much of the physical ability I had taken for granted, and the direction I thought my life was heading.

Underneath the anger and addiction was something I didn't know how to admit at the time.

I was scared.

Scared of the future. Scared that the best thing I had ever become had been taken away from me. Scared that without my trade, I didn't know who I was anymore.

So, instead of facing those feelings, I numbed them.

I knew how to fix broken machinery.

I had no idea how to fix a broken life.

To be continued.

(For previous chapters, scroll back on this page.)