TIM ELLIOTT

In one of Sydney’s toughest suburbs, a remarkable couple have thrown open their doors to whoever needs shelter, food and love. Tim Elliott meets good neighbours Lisa and Jon Owen.

Heroin has a way of complicating your life, not that Teresa Potts needed much help in that regard.

The 33-year-old Potts, who lives in Mount Druitt, was 14 when she left home after fighting with her mother. Shortly afterward, she assaulted a cab driver (“put me hand right through his window”) and was sent to juvenile prison.

At 17 she started heroin. Then she started stealing. Then she got married, and divorced.

She’s been in and out of prison almost continually and, in 2007, she overdosed at Westmead railway station. “The ambos gave me five shots of Narcan, and on the fifth one I came to.” Her life has been one long, miserable fog of problems, financial, legal and pharmaceutical, interspersed with lonely nights spent wandering about the streets of western Sydney looking for food.

Then, about five years ago, she met the Owens. “I was in Emu Plains jail, and Lisa [Owen] would come in every Tuesday at 3pm and do arts and craft with us,” Potts says. “You had to put your name on a list because everyone wanted to do it.”

One of the first things she did when she got out of prison was look up Lisa, who is now 41, and her husband, Jon, 35, at their Mount Druitt home.

No family left

“I had no family left,” Potts says. “My mother had disowned me when I got on heroin, and I don’t associate with me brothers and sisters because they’re straight. To me, Jon and Lisa were it. I came and asked them for help and they gave it to me. They have been a crucial part of my life ever since.”

It’s a fair bet that if Jesus Christ were around today, he’d be doing what the Owens are doing in Mount Druitt. They feed the poor and house the homeless. They lead the lost and counsel the conflicted.

Experts at unconditional love

They’re experts at unconditional love: alcoholic mums, runaway kids, petty thieves, everyone’s welcome at the Owens’ home, a four-bedroom brick house that for the past five years has been equal parts street kitchen and safe house, as well as a home for their daughters Kshama, 8, and Kiera, 7.

“The most we’ve had here is 13 people,” Jon says, showing me around the cramped, single-storey home, the floors of which are strewn with sheets and sleeping bags. “They crash on the couches, on the floor. It’s busy, but it’s fun, too, especially at dinner time.”

To make space, Kiera sleeps in Jon and Lisa’s room. Kshama is in an adjoining space, which is really just her parents’ walk-in wardrobe. Jaz, an 18-year-old girl whom the Owens unofficially adopted last year, recently got her own room, so she could study for the HSC.

There is also a caravan in the backyard, in case they need it. Safety isn’t as much of an issue as you might imagine: the Owens simply installed a door with a lock at the end of the corridor that leads to their bedrooms.

‘Everything worth stealing has already been stolen’

“Besides, everything worth stealing has already been stolen,” Jon says. “We had one woman who robbed us blind. Cash, cameras. Someone even took the kids’ piggy bank once. We know who took it all, but we’re still their friends. Who else is going to love them?”

Jon and Lisa Owen belong to a small Christian order called Urban Neighbours of Hope. Formed in Melbourne in 1993, UNOH’s mission is to relieve urban poverty by embedding volunteers in disadvantaged communities. UNOH workers take what amounts to a vow of poverty, surviving on an income from the organisation that is capped at the local poverty line, the idea being that they can better identify with their neighbours’ circumstances. (In Australia, this is the Henderson Poverty Line, which for a family of four means about $650 a week.) I mention that it must be hard – the constant clutter, the lack of privacy, the lack of money! – but Jon just shrugs. “One of the other teams is living in a slum in Bangkok, so we’ve got it good.”

Mount Druitt is a young suburb. Until World War II, housing centred mainly on Mount Druitt train station and nearby Rooty Hill.

The rest was semi-rural – dairy farms, egg producers, market gardens – all of it spread across languidly rolling hills. Then, in the mid-1960s, the state government bulldozed it all, building one of the largest concentrations of state housing in NSW. “It was the last of the broadacre public housing estates,” says Richard Amery, the state Labor MP for Mount Druitt. “They got thousands of people from inner-city areas like Redfern, Chippendale and Paddington and moved them out here. But it created lots of problems, because you had this massive number of people with no parks, no entertainment, poor transport links, nothing.”

Drugs and domestic violence

These days, Mount Druitt, which is comprised of 11 smaller suburbs, has the largest concentration of single-parent families in NSW, and the highest number of Aborigines living in an urban population.

In Bidwill, where the Owens live, drug use and domestic violence are common: unemployment here in 2009 was 20.1 per cent, compared to the NSW average of 5.9 per cent, making Bidwill the Mount Druitt of Mount Druitt. There are no local shops; people buy bread and milk from the pub, which is Bidwill’s only functioning business. Some scary things happen here.

“A woman was raped recently in an alley and the guy bit her fingers trying to get her rings off,” Jon says.

Such poverty has a paradoxical effect. Mount Druitt is part of the Sydney metropolitan region – it is 43 kilometres west of the CBD – but for many if not most Sydneysiders it may as well be on the moon. When 19 people were arrested during riots in Bidwill in 2007, the first thing many people asked was: where is Bidwill?

All the money leaves our community

“Economically, everything is geared away from here,” Jon says. “All the money leaves our community, it never gets re-invested. Even as the Department of Housing sells off stock, it’s mostly to investors who live outside the area.”

The most important part of the Owens’ work, then, is simply being here. “First and foremost, we are neighbours. When all else seems to be leaving, we move in. There is no professional agenda. We are about re-neighbouring a community – which means joining with the life of the neighbourhood to work together for its well-being.”

The Owens are insanely, crazily, constantly busy: they organise barbecues and a drop-in centre, cooking classes and a men’s group. Jon is part of the welfare team at the local high school; Lisa is a chaplain at Emu Plains prison. But it’s the everyday emergencies that take up most of their time. If a 14-year-old boy has dropped out of school because he’s recently become a father and he needs to re-enrol, Jon will make it happen.

If an ex-prisoner wants to discuss his compulsory reporting requirements, Jon will advise him. If a young girl runs into their kitchen fleeing her parents at 11.30pm, the Owens will put her up.

‘Feeding people is my life’s mission‘

A lot of their lives is spent cooking. “Feeding people is my life’s mission,” Jon says. “We have had to make it stretch sometimes, but then at other times more food has ended up on the plate than what we’ve cooked. I’m not super spiritual or hyper-Penty [Pentacostal], but sometimes it’s like, ‘How did everyone get a full meal out of that?’ ”

The Bidwill Community Centre, which the Owens help run, has become a hub, especially for local Aborigines, many of whom don’t own phones. “We come here to get connected,” Lillian Ballangary says.

Ballangary is 37 years old. She has big, sad, dark eyes, a voice like an air horn and a vocabulary that consists mainly of the word “f…”. Her T-shirt reads: “My anger management class PISSES ME OFF!”

She was born in South West Rocks, on the NSW north coast, to alcoholic parents. She was then sent to live with her aunties in nearby Bowraville, but they beat her. Then she was raped and when she told her aunties, they beat her more. She was then fostered out before moving to Mount Druitt at age 16.

‘I resented everything’

She’s seen two of her children die at birth and had one taken from her by DOCS. Before she met the Owens, she says, “I resented everything. I didn’t like Arthur or Martha or the f…in’ dog they walked along with.”

She still hurts a lot, and she still drinks. “Had two bottles [of beer] this morning!” But things are better than they used to be. “I rock up here and spin the shit and have some fun. Jon and Lisa have been a beautiful support for me.”

Only one of Lisa’s parents was Christian: her mother believed, but her father, a school principal, was a staunch atheist. “He used to tell Mum, ‘You take the kids to church and I’ll straighten ’em out when they get back home.’ ”

Jon’s background is more complicated still. Born in Malaysia, his father was half-Sri Lankan, half-Indian; his mum was “full Indian”. Both their families had been either Hindu or Buddhist. But then certain members on both sides converted, and everyone else followed suit. “My extended family has some interesting combinations,” Jon says. “It ranges from Hindu Buddhist Christian to the fundo [fundamentalist] Christians, who worry me a bit.”

Jon’s father had just become a lawyer when he moved the family to Melbourne in 1977. Jon is the second of four children and the only boy. “I was the only one to go to private school, which for an Asian family is normal, as I was meant to be the breadwinner.”

Jon studied computer science and electrical engineering at Melbourne University, which required him to complete a non-science component. He chose theology.

Another part of the Aussie dream

“I grew up in a family where following God was just another part of the Aussie dream, where you have a house in the suburbs, make enough money to relax, mow your lawn and cook your roast on Sunday.” As part of the theology course, however, Jon studied a section of the Bible called The Prophets, with one book, Amos, striking a chord. “At one point God says, ‘Take away from Me the noise of your songs; I will not even listen to the sound of your harps.’ I remember thinking, ‘That’s all I do; I go to church and sing songs.’ ”

His father had always stressed career and professional success. “But Jesus was not about material wealth,” Jon says. “The guy was all about intentional downward mobility! And I realised that what I really wanted was to do something significant in this world, not just piss around at the edges.”

One Sunday after church he was talking with some people about Melbourne Citymission.

Even crazier group

“They were saying how amazing their work with street kids was. But then someone else said, ‘Oh, that’s nothing, there’s this even crazier group who actually go and live in these marginalised communities.’ ”

That crazy group was UNOH. In December 1997, Jon did a two-week live-in course with UNOH in south-east Melbourne’s low-income suburb of Springvale, home at the time to a large number of East Timorese refugees, many of whom were facing imminent deportation. One little girl stood out: she had long, dark hair with big, brown eyes and a small nose; her father had worked as a truck driver for the East Timorese resistance and had been tortured to death by the Indonesian army. “On the last night I was there I asked everyone what we should pray for, and this little girl said, ‘Can you pray that we are not deported because I’m not ready to die yet?’ She was nine years old. After that, I never left UNOH.”

Jon’s decision was life-changing: for one thing, it meant dropping out of university, having completed four years of a five-year degree. “My dad reacted with shock and horror. Crying, he rang a best mate of mine, saying, ‘I don’t know who Jon has become!’ It was hard for him, because it made him ask questions, too.”

Jon spent 10 years in Springvale, during which time he retrained as a social worker at Monash University. He also met Lisa, at Springvale’s needle-exchange program, where she was working. “We fell in love over a dirty syringe,” Jon says. “So romantic.” (They married in 2001.) Lisa, like Jon, was tertiary educated: she had a PhD in pharmacology, and had worked as a research scientist at Melbourne’s Baker Institute. Both had middle-class backgrounds.

These days, however, they live without all that, without fancy food or flash cars or overseas holidays. They relax by watching TV, by listening to Leonard Cohen – Jon is also partial to Sarah Blasko – by cooking or going to the park with their kids. (Monday is “family day”, when Kshama and Kiera get their undivided attention. “Monday is sacred,” Jon says. “That and eating together as a family.”)

Jon allows himself one cigarette on the back porch at night. Neither of them drinks, because they don’t want to support an industry they believe causes so much damage. And yet they are ridiculously, implausibly happy. “Life’s good,” Jon likes to say.

“We’re driven by our faith,” Lisa explains. “I believe that as I respond to people I’m responding to Jesus, because I believe that Jesus is in all of us.”

Even the man who raped the woman and tried to bite off her fingers? “Yes, even him.”

It’s the end of the Tuesday community barbecue, and Teresa and Lillian and all the rest are leaving. Many cigarettes have been smoked, many stories told, some advice shared, lots of hugs given. Everybody takes away a container of food: barbecue chicken and salad.

Jon sometimes talks of the “battle between hope and despair” in Mount Druitt. Today, at least, that battle has been won. Bring on tomorrow.

Loaves and fishes

The Owens’ fortnightly family budget for two adults and two kids … and whoever else drops in.

Food $450
Fuel $80
Car rego, insurance, repairs $120
Medication/clothes/gym $160
Home phone/internet $32
Mobile phone $42
Financial giving $130
Gifts $40
Electricity/gas $90
Kids and dogs bits and pieces $80
Insurance $15
Other $61
Rent $0 (paid by UNOH)

Total $1300

Lisa’s tips for stretching the dollars

1. Keep with what is seasonal in terms of fruit and veg: buying out of season is invariably more expensive.

2. Meat is dear, so we always pad out dishes such as spaghetti bolognese with grated zucchini and carrots.

3. Keep an eye on specials: I stock up on pantry items and laundry detergent when they are discounted.

4. Never throw out leftovers; we either offer them to anyone who pops into the house or put them in the freezer.

5. Any scraps are fed to the chickens (which give us back eggs) and the rabbit, or fed to the dogs.

From the (sydney) magazine