TRANSCRIPT
Machines are in full spin, washing linen at a commercial laundry on the NSW north coast. Around 30 tons of dirty laundry roll through each week, and that means a lot of ironing for John Hardisty - one of its 70 workers.
“On a typical day I work on the back of an ironing machine that irons pillow cases, tea towels, napkins etc I back them, band them and stack on the shelf of a warehouse ready to go out.”
It’s hot work, especially in summer months. But Mr Hardisty is glad of this new role at Beacon Laundry and vividly remembers the day a phonecall delivered good news.
“It was actually a very emotional call – I couldn’t believe I had actually found someone that would take me on. I ended up crying on the phone call and I knew that it would change my life and it has and I am so grateful for that.”
It’s been a tough few years for Mr Hardisty who has experienced homelessness and long-term unemployment.
“I struggled for five years to find work due to my physical limitations. I have a bad back and that plays a big role in my work fitness at times. I have some blown discs and it can run the gamut from having a bit of a sore back one day to being in excruciating agony and having to take pretty heavy medications to be able to get through that pain. So, I struggled to find an employer that was flexible enough to understand that I still had some value. And when I heard about Beacon I thought, well I’ll give it a go. And I am really glad I did as you can imagine after 5 years of looking for work and not finding any was pretty low.”
For the Wiradjuri man, life’s challenges began growing up in Sydney’s west during the 1980’s.
“School was difficult place for me there was a lot of racism and a lot of bullying and vilification that went on back in those days.”
As an adult, he went on to work for 25 years as a residential youth worker in community housing. During that time, he married and after a long wait, finally became a father.
However, his wife Arula died of renal failure just eight years later.
“When my wife passed I really just wanted to run away and hide from the world but I needed somewhere safe to raise my son so that’s when I took on a farm.”
Life on a self-sufficient farm was idyllic and lasted a decade.
But Mr Hardisty’s later move to a camping ground near Mullumbimby, resulted in losing all his possessions when record flooding hit the northern rivers in 2022. He is amazed to have survived at all!
“I jumped out the van at 2.20 in the morning with a dog under each arm and I jumped into chest height water. I could not stand up. I was hit in the back by a floating picnic table. The memories still are very vivid. I was left tapped in the camp ground area for 11 days before we could get out. I slept on a table in the laundry.”
Like many flood survivors in the Lismore area, Mr Hardisty has since suffered poor mental health.
“It’s devastated my life. I was diagnosed with clinical depression and medicated for that. It was very difficult to see a way forward in life after that happened. I suppose I spent the next year and a half fairly lost and it took everything I had and I didn’t know how to start from scratch.”
That’s where not-for-profit social enterprise Beacon Laundry has stepped in for Mr Hardisty, and others like him. Administration Co-ordinator Harriet Vasey Pederson explains.
“In the Northern Rivers over the last decade after the drought, the floods and covid, there is a higher number of people who have experienced either losing their jobs, their homes, and kind of community support. So, Beacon offers a safe place for people to land who are ready to get back into the workforce and build their capacity to then transition out into the wider workforce.”
As well, the social enterprise laundry has adjusted Mr Hardisty’s role, to enable him better cope with backpain from an earlier workplace injury.
“We’ve got rubber matting for concrete floor where I was struggling on concrete floor a bit, and that’s addressed that issue. We’ve played around with the hours of work and having breaks in between. We’ve also looked at different functions at Beacon and which ones I can do and which ones I can’t. And since then it’s been great and I’ve been able to fill my hours with little pain.”
The laundry in the bucolic town of Bangalow is an initiative of White Box Enterprises and was set up at a cost of 12 million dollars. It follows the success of an earlier laundry project in rural Queensland. CEO Luke Terry explains.
“We've got about 27 different investors in the project at the moment and a lot of our support came from friends and family and people and foundations that we'd worked with over a long-time. And then we had to borrow another $6 million and we're still trying to raise the last half a million dollars at the moment.”
Acknowledging the great work of not-for-profits, the federal government’s May budget unveiled a 22-million-dollar employment initiative for social enterprises working directly with people facing complex barriers.
That’s good news for Mr Terry who is already planning his third project, to create more work for disadvantaged people across Australia.
“White Box believes in a world where everyone that wants a job should have access to a job and that social enterprises or businesses that want to be there for the whole community should be the way of the future. And we want to work with more and corporate partners, to work out ways where there might be an anchor contract in place or the finance in place where we can do this in every community to build more of these.”
For those who benefit, like John Hardisty, working at Beacon Laundry is about more than a job and a regular income.
“I have a lot of goals now, which is funny. I was always used to not having goals because they were just so unattainable so that they did more harm than good. But having a job here and one I feel secure and safe and comfortable in, means I can look to the future I’d like to do some traveling, sand get into a home of my own!”
