Word: footscray
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...compassion, his words punching through the chill wind of a bloody-minded Melbourne spring. His conviction is kinetic: he's a man with a steady gaze and fresh legs, impatient to change the temper of the times. What's to be done? We're out in Gurr's Footscray neighborhood, in the city's western suburbs, where the factory whistles were silenced long ago. The place, now teeming with Vietnamese and African eateries, looks lively and exotic. But hard and desperate, too. A woman scuttles past, foraging in planter pots in the plaza. As soon as Gurr realizes...
...things that have been stripped out of the national conversation." Despite his fury, Gurr is free of rancor. He's hard-headed about federal Labor's chances next year, but remains positive about the cause. "I refuse to be cynical," he says, as the lunchtime queues lengthen outside a Footscray bank's suite of five ATMs. "Cynicism is a kind of laziness. To be cynical about politics is to give up on life. And I refuse...
...change in the heroin trade in late 2000 and early 2001 was as sudden as it was unexpected. Pina Bampi no longer uses heroin, but she remembers the desperation on the streets of Footscray, an inner suburb of Melbourne, when supply of the drug simply dried up. "People were so panicked, so worried about getting sick (from withdrawal)," Bampi says. "It lasted for three or four months, but to us that was forever." Though heroin is more available now, the ripple effects of the drought continue to be felt, most noticeably in national overdose-death rates, which have plunged since...
Tregear, who works with Open Family, a street-based service for children, young people and their families in Footscray, has been helping the disadvantaged in Melbourne's western suburbs for more than two decades. The heroin supply recovered quickly there, he says, but purity - an indicator of supply levels, because dealers dilute with other substances when supply falls - has never returned to the "wild levels" of the late 1990s. He believes fewer overdose deaths and the record numbers of users entering treatment have taken the heroin problem off the front pages. "People think it's all O.K., but that...
...What has changed, says Bampi, is the way the drug moves around the streets. The footpath used to be the marketplace, but since police in Footscray and other known suburban hotspots began cracking down with more patrols, undercover surveillance and arrests, dealing has moved to darker corners. There, says Tregear, it's harder for police, health professionals and drug workers to find addicts. "You used to almost get killed in the rush of people selling out there," he says. Bampi's friends now ring contacts to organize deals, arranging to buy in cars, parks or busy shops. "It might take...