23/09/2026
Memorial Drive. A little mobile service provider's (initially) brief perspective.
We get up to more than just providing showers. Especially when a community is given 24 hours to vacate. Be dispossessed. Be displaced. Provided with no meaningful alternatives beyond best wishes and good luck.
Like yesterday, shifting a previously- car sleeping pensioner, gifted a caravan, but without a tow ball to move it.
In our time at Memorial Drive, we've met wonderful people including
- a grandparent who is sole carer for a grandchild
- folks getting up and going to work every day, with money for rent but unable to find an available and affordable place
- people fleeing domestic violence who have felt safe and looked after by their Memorial Drive neighbours, in a state where we only have beds in refuges for about 25% of the people seeking shelter
- and lots of pensioners including veterans who, as a for instance, have struggled to find any kind of caravan park spots since receiving their intent to move on notices last week, even if they can afford the weekly fees - roughly equivalent to the cost of renting a unit five or six years ago.
Just a small sample and no different to the personal stories we encounter wherever we operate in greater Perth metro.
Memorial Drive residents haven't been disturbing or disrupting existing residential areas that we've heard of. But we do hear stories about the generousity and support of local (housed) residents all of the time. And the Rockingham area hosts some of the most generous, kind-hearted and giving local support services that we encounter anywhere in the great metro area.
But the existence of Memorial Drive is an embarrassment for a government soon to be hosting and housing hundreds of US defence personnel in the neighbourhood, overseas guests who would bear witness to our growing housing and homelessness challenges. A government that is spending billions on Westport just up the road, that will create some of the most valuable commercial and industrial land in the country.
And we've read the weasel words.
Unattributed and unsubstantiated claims that people have been offered accommodation and declined. We haven't met anyone that has been offered secure housing and declined, or that have been offered secure housing that they can afford and declined.
We read about unattributed claims of anti-social behaviour. We have anti-social behaviour in Vic Park, where we are based. The government doesn't swoop in and displace everyone in order to address it, they deal with the source of the behaviour.
We take heart when we read about stories like Moreton Bay, where the Queensland Supreme Court found in part that evictions without offering sufficient time or meaningful alternatives violated basic human rights.
'Justice Smith declared the fast-tracked evictions "degrading" and "inhumane," noting that the council failed to offer a reasonable timeframe or coordinate alternative accommodation in an area where homelessness "far exceeded" social housing capacity'.
The decision has resulted in a 12 month managed homeless encampment trial in a local park.
We note the recent activities of the Minister for (attempting to manage our perceptions of how our government deals with) Homelessness.
At the beginning of Sept, Matthew Swinbourn MLC and Member for Rockingham Magenta Marshall announced that they were delivering on an election commitment to spend $1 million upgrading dunnies just around the corner in Point Peron. There are no reports of sightings of the Minister visiting Memorial Drive or engaging with residents, an encampment much larger than the previous Fremantle tent city or McIver Station underpass encampment.
We presume that Matthew Swinbourn attended in his capacity as Minister for the Environment, responsible for the Dept of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions that control Memorial Drive and that are currently issuing vacate notices.
A few weeks ago, he publicly indicated that Memorial Drive would need to be resolved by the end of the year.
Then on Monday 14 Sept, Safe Nights Rockingham for 30 people was announced, details and planning underway. Safe Night spaces in Perth do not provide beds and are only available for a maximum of 10 days in a row at a time. At this point, we do not know what happens to people's possessions at night or what happens to those lucky 30 people during the day.
Later that Monday, we received an email from the Office of Homelessness asking service providers to attend an online meeting at 11am the next day, on Tues 15 Sept.
On Tues, we were told that notices of the intent to issue formal move-on notices to Memorial Drive residents would occur the next day. We were told that formal notices would then be issued the following (this week) but were not told which day or how long people would be given to respond or act.
Early yesterday morning, Weds 23 Sept, DBCA rangers, police and - interestingly - major media arrived and the issuance of formal notices occurred.
After the fact, at 9:30am yesterday, service providers received an email from the Office of Homelessness providing service providers with an update on 'closure planning activities'. No mention was made of the fact that residents were given 24 hours to vacate.
Stay tuned.
