Horror story behind girl's smiling photo
Half of young homeless Australians asking for a place to sleep are being turned away, figures from a leading NSW not-for-profit show, with one woman who got lucky in a 'million-to-one' chance now pushing for change.
NSW organisation Yfoundations has taken to filming young homeless people as they search for a safe place to sleep, putting a face to the overwhelming demand for help.
'The popularity of shows like Survivor and Alone has turned survival into entertainment,' Yfoundations chief executive John Macmillan told NewsWire.
'This series confronts the raw reality too many young Australians face every day.
'Youth homelessness is not just a statistic; it's a human tragedy.'
The content series is called Young and Alone.
Organisation films young homeless people searching for safety
'We're fascinated by watching adults battle brutal conditions for fun, but survival isn't a social experiment for young people experiencing homelessness – it's a hard-hitting reality and the content series shines the light on this.'
Sydneysider Natasha Ransford was saved by a 'million-to-one' chance, a youth refuge centre saving a bed while she was on school camp.
Now nine years later, Ms Ransford, 25, is a youth worker at the very same refuge.
'No young person chooses to be homeless,' she told NewsWire.
'There are a lot of misconceptions that young people are just bad and that they get on drugs, or they don't want to listen to their parents, or they move out and that's why they become homeless. I want to challenge all those misconceptions.' Sydney woman Natasha Ransford works for the youth refuge organisation that took her in as a teenager. Supplied Credit: Supplied
From ages 14 to 16, Ms Ransford was bouncing between her sister and her dad's house, as her mother's 'severe' alcoholism up-ended the teenager's home life.
She found a home with Project Youth in Sydney's southwest. A scholarship from Toyota helped her finish year 12 while working part time, cooking and cleaning for herself after school.
'I had to grow up very quickly and it's been beneficial for me now,' Ms Ransford said.
'I've been paying rent since I was 16, I'm good with money and budgeting. I have a really strong work ethic.
'But to put that onto a 16 year old, it wasn't fair.'
In year 10, dropping out of school to go and work seemed like the best option.
Ms Ransford's mental health was in poor condition, and she had learnt to use alcohol as a coping mechanism.
With the help of Project Youth, support from school and health care, she now holds a Diploma of Community Services and a Certificate IV in Leadership and Management.
She was never forced to sleep rough, was able to go from the refuge to transitional housing, and now rents a place with friends. Across the country, there are estimated to be more than 43,000 young people experiencing or at risk of becoming homeless. NewsWire / Ian Currie Credit: News Corp Australia
Ms Ransford identifies a turning point in her life – when Project Youth held a bed so she could go on school camp.
'I was 16 … I went in one afternoon and told them basically what was going on at home.
'Surprisingly, they had a bedroom available that night, which normally is very, very rare.
'I had year 11 camp the next day.
'I asked them if they could hold the bed for me until after I got back from camp. They did, which they wouldn't be able to do now just because the need has grown so much.'
The youth refuge became her home, on a Saturday after school camp.
'The chances of that happening now would be like a million-to-one,' Ms Ransford said.
'I don't think any service can afford to hold a bed for three nights for someone.
'It's unfortunately the case of if you can get it that time, then you can. First in, first serve, but I quite often think that was a turning point in my life.'
Yfoundations has launched a petition calling on the federal and state governments to make ending youth homelessness a national priority, with the development of a targeted plan and funding.
'For too long, the specific and complex needs of children and young people at risk of or experiencing homelessness have been assumed to be the same as those of adults and have not been explicitly addressed in government plans to address homelessness,' the petition reads.
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The Advertiser
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- The Advertiser
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Few stories start in a more compelling way than Ian McEwan's brilliant novel Enduring Love (1997). Several men, strangers to each other, rush across an English field converging on a stricken helium balloon as they try frantically to hold it grounded long enough to free a child cowering in its basket. As the ungainly apparatus is gusted violently aloft during a wind squall, the men suddenly find themselves "treading air", each facing a terrible choice - whether to hang on in the hope their collective weight will bring it down again or let go before rising too high to survive the fall. It might seem rich to describe Australia's umbilical attachment to the United States as an enduring love, but that unanswerable question in the untethered balloon scene feels disturbingly apt. As does the book's title. The bilateral relationship has survived long enough to natural, even definitional. With that "enduring", though, has come less admirable attributes like unbalanced, fawning, and captive. Hence the reckless conservative boast that Australians have fought alongside Americans in every war they've undertaken since 1900. This includes moral, legal, and strategic outrages like Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. Like McEwan's disparate characters twisting precariously on guy ropes and slaves to untameable forces of physics, the existential question of whether to cling on or let go, is fast becoming existential. Not that the cheerleaders of the AUKUS caucus are awake to it. While the US talks openly of rehabilitating Russia, invading Greenland and seizing the Panama Canal, they mouth terms like strategic alignment, shared values, cooperation and interoperability. In so many ways, McEwan's exquisitely described dilemma seems like a fitting metaphor for this instant. A temporally reflexive metaphor that works, albeit in different ways, for Australia, for Iran, for Israel, and even for those democracies keeping schtum as another American president contemplates a Middle Eastern war. And as Israel reveals its bottomless reserves of military power and lawless vengeance. In short order, Iran must decide if it is to surrender its nuclear enrichment capacities - even for exclusively peaceful domestic purposes like medical isotopes - or face a US aerial bombardment of unimaginable ferocity. Israel must decide, in the same compressed timeframe, if it is to accommodate such assurances - should Donald Trump insist(?) - or fight on condemning Israelis to further carnage and the state itself to perennial insecurity in its region. It is a choice between an unlikely peace and the guarantee of endless war and an ever-enduring hate. The oafish Trump has no plan. He has bought himself a mere fortnight to decide between backing off or pursuing a path he expressly campaigned against. McEwan's well-meaning strangers who've sprinted towards the flailing balloon exhibit some characteristics of the international community. In the nine days since Israel's far-right Netanyahu government began bombing Iran's nuclear sites without warning, a kind of uncoordinated helplessness has taken hold. Those gathered in Canada for the G7 caved instantly to US and Israeli pressure, citing the Jewish state's limitless "right to defend itself". The group called Iran the "principal source of regional instability". While the criticism of Iran is justified, one might have expected the top liberal states to weigh more heavily the authoritative opinions of international legal scholars such as Professor Ben Saul, Challis chair of international law at the University of Sydney and UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counter Terrorism. Saul says Israel's claimed legal impunity simply does not apply here. "Israel claims that its attack is necessary to prevent Iran acquiring nuclear weapons and using them in the future. The problem is that under international law, a country may only defend itself from an actual or imminent armed attack by another country," wrote Saul in the Guardian. As the rules break down, such facts have become ethereal, prone to dissipating, like so much helium. READ MORE KENNY: It is worth remembering that the trend to American unreliability now so blatant, started more than two decades ago, when fragmentary intelligence was deliberately "sexed up" to look like solid intel ahead of the Iraq invasion. America's "forever wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan, with the attendant abuses of Abu Ghraib and the eventual surrender to the very Taliban it had expelled - signalled a loss of prestige internationally. But they also sparked a crisis at the moral and institutional core of America. The nativist, protectionist, anti-establishment Trump is its indignant progeny. A vulgar up-yours to the compromises of democracy and the checks on executive power by laws, courts, multilateral bodies and international norms. As Hugh White notes in his latest insightful Quarterly Essay, "Hard New World: Our Post-American Future", the nation which had saved democracy, then created and policed a post-war rules-based international order, has gone and is not coming back. Now, an avowed America First isolationist scoffs at such an order (globally and domestically) and ridicules the haughty ethics that had underpinned it. Even last week, Trump arrived at the G7 only to complain that Vladimir Putin should be there too. To bend McEwan's balloon dilemma further, Australia might ask itself a further question: are we the poor sods clinging white-knuckled to guy ropes? Or are we perhaps the panicked child cowering in the basket, too frightened to determine our own survival as a sovereign nation? Few stories start in a more compelling way than Ian McEwan's brilliant novel Enduring Love (1997). Several men, strangers to each other, rush across an English field converging on a stricken helium balloon as they try frantically to hold it grounded long enough to free a child cowering in its basket. As the ungainly apparatus is gusted violently aloft during a wind squall, the men suddenly find themselves "treading air", each facing a terrible choice - whether to hang on in the hope their collective weight will bring it down again or let go before rising too high to survive the fall. It might seem rich to describe Australia's umbilical attachment to the United States as an enduring love, but that unanswerable question in the untethered balloon scene feels disturbingly apt. As does the book's title. The bilateral relationship has survived long enough to natural, even definitional. With that "enduring", though, has come less admirable attributes like unbalanced, fawning, and captive. Hence the reckless conservative boast that Australians have fought alongside Americans in every war they've undertaken since 1900. This includes moral, legal, and strategic outrages like Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. Like McEwan's disparate characters twisting precariously on guy ropes and slaves to untameable forces of physics, the existential question of whether to cling on or let go, is fast becoming existential. Not that the cheerleaders of the AUKUS caucus are awake to it. While the US talks openly of rehabilitating Russia, invading Greenland and seizing the Panama Canal, they mouth terms like strategic alignment, shared values, cooperation and interoperability. In so many ways, McEwan's exquisitely described dilemma seems like a fitting metaphor for this instant. A temporally reflexive metaphor that works, albeit in different ways, for Australia, for Iran, for Israel, and even for those democracies keeping schtum as another American president contemplates a Middle Eastern war. And as Israel reveals its bottomless reserves of military power and lawless vengeance. In short order, Iran must decide if it is to surrender its nuclear enrichment capacities - even for exclusively peaceful domestic purposes like medical isotopes - or face a US aerial bombardment of unimaginable ferocity. Israel must decide, in the same compressed timeframe, if it is to accommodate such assurances - should Donald Trump insist(?) - or fight on condemning Israelis to further carnage and the state itself to perennial insecurity in its region. It is a choice between an unlikely peace and the guarantee of endless war and an ever-enduring hate. The oafish Trump has no plan. He has bought himself a mere fortnight to decide between backing off or pursuing a path he expressly campaigned against. McEwan's well-meaning strangers who've sprinted towards the flailing balloon exhibit some characteristics of the international community. In the nine days since Israel's far-right Netanyahu government began bombing Iran's nuclear sites without warning, a kind of uncoordinated helplessness has taken hold. Those gathered in Canada for the G7 caved instantly to US and Israeli pressure, citing the Jewish state's limitless "right to defend itself". The group called Iran the "principal source of regional instability". While the criticism of Iran is justified, one might have expected the top liberal states to weigh more heavily the authoritative opinions of international legal scholars such as Professor Ben Saul, Challis chair of international law at the University of Sydney and UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counter Terrorism. Saul says Israel's claimed legal impunity simply does not apply here. "Israel claims that its attack is necessary to prevent Iran acquiring nuclear weapons and using them in the future. The problem is that under international law, a country may only defend itself from an actual or imminent armed attack by another country," wrote Saul in the Guardian. As the rules break down, such facts have become ethereal, prone to dissipating, like so much helium. READ MORE KENNY: It is worth remembering that the trend to American unreliability now so blatant, started more than two decades ago, when fragmentary intelligence was deliberately "sexed up" to look like solid intel ahead of the Iraq invasion. America's "forever wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan, with the attendant abuses of Abu Ghraib and the eventual surrender to the very Taliban it had expelled - signalled a loss of prestige internationally. But they also sparked a crisis at the moral and institutional core of America. The nativist, protectionist, anti-establishment Trump is its indignant progeny. A vulgar up-yours to the compromises of democracy and the checks on executive power by laws, courts, multilateral bodies and international norms. As Hugh White notes in his latest insightful Quarterly Essay, "Hard New World: Our Post-American Future", the nation which had saved democracy, then created and policed a post-war rules-based international order, has gone and is not coming back. Now, an avowed America First isolationist scoffs at such an order (globally and domestically) and ridicules the haughty ethics that had underpinned it. Even last week, Trump arrived at the G7 only to complain that Vladimir Putin should be there too. To bend McEwan's balloon dilemma further, Australia might ask itself a further question: are we the poor sods clinging white-knuckled to guy ropes? Or are we perhaps the panicked child cowering in the basket, too frightened to determine our own survival as a sovereign nation?
Perth Now
11 hours ago
- Perth Now
Swimmers strip down and the ocean during winter solstice
Swimmers have stripped off and braved brisk waters on the shortest day of the year. Wearing nothing but red swim caps, 3000 souls took the annual nude sunrise plunge into Hobart's River Derwent to mark the winter solstice on Saturday. The water temperature was about 13C as the naked pack took to the river at 7.40am, sparking shrieks and anguished yells. Liz Cannard, who has been travelling around Tasmania for almost four months with her husband, said she was petrified before taking the dip. 'I'm not a strong swimmer and I don't take my gear off for anybody ... so I've ticked off a couple of things today,' the Geelong resident said. HOBART, AUSTRALIA- NewsWire Photos- JUNE 21, 2025. Dark Mofo Nude Solstice Swim 2025 at Long Beach Sandy Bay. Nikki Davis-Jones/ NewsWire Credit: NCA NewsWire Lizzy Nash from Sydney was also in the mood for a bit of carpe diem. 'It's about seizing the moment, seizing life and being inspired,' she said. 'This is the sort of thing that motivates you to want to do more and challenge yourself. It was awe-inspiring and I absolutely loved it.' The free swim is part of the Dark Mofo festival and started with just a few hundred participants in 2013. Melburnian Belinda Chambers has been watching people do it on television for years and decided to work remotely from Tasmania for the festival so she could stay and leave on a high. 'So exhilarating,' she said post swim. 'I was nervous but there was this almost primal moment of everyone being together that carries you along, and a sense of pure happiness.' Dark Mofo festival returned to its full pomp in 2025 after running a reduced program in 2024 so it could find a more sustainable financial model. It has made a name for itself by courting controversy and in 2018 drew the ire of some by installing inverted Christian crosses along Hobart's waterfront. HOBART, AUSTRALIA- NewsWire Photos- JUNE 21, 2025. Dark Mofo Nude Solstice Swim 2025 at Long Beach Sandy Bay. Nikki Davis-Jones/ NewsWire Credit: NCA NewsWire Festival artistic director Chris Twite said the swim was a tremendous way to bring things to a close. 'The response in 2025 has been incredible,' he said. 'The streets of Hobart have come alive with locals and visitors celebrating winter and Dark Mofo again.' University of Queensland psychologists surveyed swimmers in previous years before and after they took the plunge and found a significant boost in feelings of connection. 'People told us about whether they felt pain and pleasure during the swim,' Laura Ferris said. 'And those who rated their swim as pleasurable also felt more social connection with the other people around them.' It is an example of people seeking out aversive experiences, such as eating extremely spicy food or watching horror movies. 'This is what psychologists call 'benign masochism',' Dr Ferris said. That could be the optimal term for expeditioners at Australia's four Antarctic and sub-Antarctic research stations, who also celebrated the solstice with a much-colder traditional plunge. At the three Antarctic stations, a hole is cut in the sea ice each year and expeditioners have a quick dip in the sub-zero waters. 'The shock is closely followed by a rush, which is quickly followed by a scramble to the ladder to get the hell out of that water,' Mawson Station leader Dave Roberts said. 'Ironically, the water is warmer than the wind chill, so it's all a bit confusing but totally worth it.' Those on the sub-Antarctic base at Macquarie Island have it mildly easier for their beach swims, with temperatures hovering from 2C to 4C. A shared meal and the exchanging of gifts and awards round out expedition festivities for the solstice, which is historically the most important day on the Australian Antarctic calendar. 'It's the soul of the Antarctic winter,' Casey Station leader Andy Warton said.
