A year ago I spent four months living in one of Australia's most notorious houses of ill repute, the infamous - Gatwick Hotel! It was full of the best and some would say the worst people.
Inhabitants of The Gatwick were often Transexuals, drug addicts, murders, dealers, thieves, indigenous Australians and prostitutes.
I fell in love with the place and all the people I met there!
Random Wild Adventures??? - I Love Them!!! 😉
I had no intention of staying in this marvellous 1930's art deco building which was full of saints and sinners but within three minutes of setting foot in the building I knew I needed to stay there. If even only for a short period!
I ended staying at the Gatwick for nearly four months during the winter period when The Gatty as it is affectionately known by the locals is full with those with nowhere else to go. It was a fascinating time in my life and I will write more about it with some of the excellent stories from my time there.
The Incredible Gatwick Private Hotel
During my stay I became the local medic, washed sheets, broke up fights, cleaned very dirty toilets and picked up literally thousands of used needles with my bare hands. I did all this for free to try my best to contribute to a society of people who's lives were already heavily burdened.
I had many adventures and contributed to two documentaries as well as a photo shoot in the building. I also kept a lot of notes and digital documentation for myself. Some of these photos will be used in this post. Others perhaps later.
It is my great pleasure to introduce you to some of the most amazing people I have every met - but sadly many people would disagree. The heart of the building was without doubt a pair of incredible, psychic Twin sisters who had been running the building since they were 14 and have seen it all.
In Australia it is difficult to keep animals in a public building and usually illegal to smoke. In The Gatwick I saw so manny staffies, pitties and other gangsta dogs living in the building. In The Gatwick you could smoke everywhere and that included smoking cannabis in the office while the police were speaking to the smoker. I have never seen a more amazing collection of premium bikes and other expensive gear rolling into any other building in the world. All of it was stollen!
All people and animals were treated with equal respect in this amazing building run by two AMAZING TWINS! 😃
The Twins Rose & Etty (or Rosetty as I often thought of them) - were truly spectacular individuals! We definitely need more people like them in this world! The United Nations should be run by these Twins! 😘
Sadly due to local and other pressures The Gatwick has recently been sold bringing to an end 70 years of much needed support for Australia's most vulnerable! 😢 I hardly even have the heart to tell you what will be happing to this landmark building.
An Amazing Video Of The Gatwick - Saints Of St Kilda
The video above is excellent and will allow you to meet the Twins and some of the wonderful people from The Gatwick. I knew all of them and tried to help in whatever ways I could. The place looks rough and it was.
There were fights, death, blood and other dark things in the building but there was also amazing humanity and compassion! It was one of the most amazing places I have ever lived and I met incredible people!
I wish we could put this video on dtube! 😉
The Twins - Oh My Buddha They Are So Amazing!!! 😘
I fell in love with these two incredible Twins and I think they felt the same way about me. They were very complimentary about me to my mother! 😉
The story of this family is awesome and you hear some of it in the video above. The Twins left school at such a young age to run The Gatwick. They cared for all those poor destitute people with hearts of gold and they have incredible insight into things. They had seen all the drugs come and go over the years. Like most of us they agreed that Ice is one of the most dangerous and damaging drugs we have ever seen.
The Twins worked extremely hard. Washing, cleaning and running the whole building of hundreds of needy people.
This was all done old school with paper and pen - not a computer in sight! Only one of Twins has an old phone and an old hotmail address. Otherwise it's pure old school!
These two amazing Twins also had exceptional skills at conflict resolution. They had broken up so many fights and disputes over the decades that they had developed excellent arbitration skills. I often told them that if the United Nations behaved as it should, these two Twins would be running it and sorting out all the squabbles.
I would have thought that after decades of dealing with drug addicts that the Twins would not lend money to people. The complete opposite was true.... on the sly they were always lending money to those who really needed it! I saw it happen hundreds of times!
Like caring mothers - bless their little cotton socks! 😘
With all this amazing knowledge and skills they were not often recognised for their troubles. They had often invited schools to bring the kids into the building so that teenagers could see the ravages that drugs have on people. This would be very valuable and powerful information for school children. The truth! Sadly not a single school ever accepted their generous offer!
What a wasted opportunity! How sad! What a terrible inditement of our failing school systems! 😢
The Gatty
This amazing building and it's inhabitants were not liked within the community as they lowered the tone of the up and coming St Kilda beach community gentrification. Yet when I spoke with the Twins they made the very relevant point:
"Well we were here first a long time before many of these new comers!" - and quite right they were!
The building housed so many odd characters. Mostly in winter time when it was cold people would make their way inside for somewhere warm to sleep. The Twins were always incredibly accommodating. Many people would arrive straight from the prison or the mental asylum to The Gatwick or leave heading to those places. The police were in the building often more than five times a day and I saw the best community policing in The Gatwick that I have seen in Australia!
There were only a few toilets for the 100+ people - most were drug addicts so the facilities became very dirty quickly. Only three rooms in the entire building of over 70 rooms had their own toilets/bathtubs. Later I was to occupy one in the wildest part of the building! 😉
The Amazing Gatwick Crew!
I always speak to strangers wherever I am - when I explained I was living in The Gatwick Hotel, Melbourne strangers would looked shocked and say to me:
"Oh you poor person! What terrible thing happened to you? I would rather sleep in the car or in the park than set foot in The Gatwick!"
I was always proud to tell them how amazing the place was and that:
"I choose to live there and wouldn't want to be anywhere else right now! The Gatwick is the beating heart of Melbourne!" 😉
The main occupants of The Gatwick could be split into several categories:
- Drug Addicts (mostly heroin and ice - 90%+) - I don't use drugs but I don't judge others who suffer addiction!
- Dealers
- Thieves
- The Insane
- Prostitutes
and my favourite two groups of people: - The Transexuals
- The Indigenous Australians
I had a lot of adventures in that building. There was a lot of clandestine alcohol being produced, everyone was high and fighting a lot and there was an ice pipe making factory in one of the rooms. The Twins and the night manager Michael were amazing and made the entire process extremely amusing.
Getting to know these different groups of people was fascinating! Previously I had only had limited contact with indigenous Australians and very little contact with Transexuals. I found their friendships and insights to be the most interesting and wisest I have heard in a long time. I never got tired of their wild stories of life on the streets and indigenous legends! Sometimes I cried during these stories...
Mostly I laughed and cried tears of joy! 😃
Checking Into The Gatty!
My first experiences and night in The Gatwick were amazing and because of what I'm about to relate I am sure that may of you will think I am insane. The truth is I don't judge people for how they are rather for how they act.
I had seen this building for many years but had no idea what was inside. When I walked into The Gatwick that first time around midnight my guide was an old indigenous Australian prostitute who took my hand in her calloused one and lead me inside - The Gatwick!
I could sense some danger the moment I walked in. I changed my stride so it was more aggressive, put my shoulders back, hardened my face and checked that my bandanna was handy should I need it for defence.
As we rose up the beautiful wide 1930s art deco staircase I was entranced with what I saw. On the first landing there were two indigenous Australian men. One was wearing the freakiest werewolf's mask that I have ever seen! The other was loudly and expertly playing the Didgeridoo!
"wooommmmm, wooom, wommm-woooohhhooom- wohmmm!"
We passed the men, knocked on a door and were admitted into a room with too much debauchery going on to describe here on Steemit!
As I swiftly exited the room. I ditched my guide and made my way downstairs to the night managers office. The guy was an amazing Englishman who I was later to discover had an incredible sense of humour and whit. We became fast friends!
I asked for a room for the night. I told him:
"I have a room in a hotel around the corner buddy but it's so boring, full of female swedish backpackers smoking pot! It's all good but I'm not happy there and would rather stay here. This looks a lot more fun! Have you got a room mate?"
Michael the night porter cast a discerning eye over me and said:
"Are you sure you really want to stay here? This is a strange place! OK - we have a room for you. We will put you in the back - the safe area!"
I certainly had the look and could imitate the walk and physical demeanour to fit in with this edgy Gatwick crew - but my accent and speech was a total give away! I was clearly not from those communities that had been using The Gatwick and prisons for decades! Even with my freaky haircut I knew I would be wise to speak as little as possible - this has never been my forte and again I failed miserably at keeping my mouth shut!! LOL! 😉
My First Night In The Gatwick!
I grabbed my stuff from the nearby hotel and moved straight into The Gatwick in ten minutes. I was to stay there for four months. The room they gave me was on the third floor at the back and supposedly in the "safe area"! As I entered the room I could feel the energy of a 1000 mad and beautiful people in there with me. I also noticed that the lock to the door was super dodgy and I could nudge it open with my shoulder!
I settled into my new room by barricading the door shut with a double couch perched on top of a heavy wooden chest-of-draws. I placed an old heavy TV on-top of the draws and sofa and went to sleep. There was an iron bar, the handle wrapped in a piece of Bali sarong next to my bed.
When I awoke I was glad I had taken these precautions, because I awoke to loud screaming from a voice which I will never forget. The voice sounded like it had come from the depths of the Australian prisons and it had! Raspy and violent!
"Open tha door now yahhh faahckin dog! Yah maggot!!!! I've got a faahcking knife and I'm going to stab yaaah in the throat ye dirty mongrel!!!
I have never put my contact lenses and jeans on faster! He had pushed the door open but the barricade I had built was holding him outside. His arm was reaching in through the crack in the door. I could see a long, sharp stiletto blade grasped upside down - dagger style in his hand. He was trying to reach into the room with the knife. This man was extremely agitated and potentially dangerous!
I was up, contact lenses in, jeans on and leaning against my barricade. As his arm was reaching in the door I knew I could break it with just one heavy shove against the barricade which would jam his arm between the door and door-jam. If I had been genuinely afraid for my safety I would have done so - but I wasn't really afraid. I knew he couldn't get to me and I was in charge of the situation. To the voice on the other side of the door I said:
"My brother! Listen to my voice! I can year your's and I am certain we have never met. I would totally recognise your voice! Listen to my voice and you will know that you also don't know me! You are looking for the wrong person mate!"
This seemed to eventually work and he left. Although this sounds insane to many people I can totally handle these kind of adventures and I know there is a lot to knowledge to be gained through these edgy experiences. After that experience I was energised and could not go back to sleep. I was never to sleep a night in The Gatwick without barricading my door. Energised I went downstairs, met the Twins and drank brandy while I got to know them and tried to help out with washing and cleaning! I fell in love with those girls immediately! 😘
As I mentioned previously I stayed in The Gatwick for 4 months during the winter and I had a wonderful time. I met some of the most beautiful people I have ever met. I assisted in dealing with bizarre experiences, cleaned the worst toilets I have ever seen, cooked, cleaned stab wounds, got stabbed with a needle, broke up fights and took people to hospital and generally tried to help out.
The stories and lessons I have to share about these wild experiences are fantastic.
Please just ask me and I will be happy to share them - there are a lot of valuable lessons in thee stories! 😉
Murder, Earl & The Subjugation Of The Australian Indigenous Peoples! 😢
When I first moved into The Gatwick I had a neighbour called Earl who was very friendly to me - we chilled a bit. Yet Earl was not white - they were indigenous Australian who suffer way more than white people in Australia! While I was living next door to Earl he killed a guy further up the road one night with a tomahawk in the face! Dead! He is now doing 20 years in prison.
After the murder Earl hid up in the roof of The Gatwick for a few days! Police came in droves, helicopters, vans, hundreds of officers. I could hear Earl sliding around in the roof at night. When the police came to cordon off The Gatwick most of us sat in the sun on the other side of the street, drinking port and applauding the ineptitude of the police.
Eventually they caught Earl and now he may never see life outside a prison. Although I disagree with his murderous actions when I am next in Australia I will go and visit him!
Sadly this is indicative of a wider problem in Australia which is the subjugation of its indigenous population. Australia is the only commonwealth country which has never signed a treaty with its indigenous population... And they are never going to!! 😡
The mineral wealth in Australia is worth too much to give any to these "black fellas"! The communities, cultures, diets and lives of indigenous Australians are being purposely destroyed by food, drugs and disharmony. This is so that indigenous Australians cannot present a cohesive stance against their aggressors and achieve the rightful ownership of a land that they have inhabited for over 40,000 years!
There is so much information on this subject but if you want more I suggest you watch Stolen Generations / Australian Aboriginal Brief History and That Sugar Film - this is a great film but if you want to see the interesting information concerning Australia's indigenous community start watching at minute 33:00! 😢
The Sad Closure Of The Gatwick
To my great consternation The Gatwick closed its doors for the last time around 6 months ago. This marked the end of 70 years of sheltering some of Australia's most dispossessed people. I feel privileged to have lived with them and grown to love them while I had the chance!
To my understanding the closure was the result of several factors, one of which was pressure from the local community who didn't enjoy having their land rates lowered by The Gatwick. I won't reprint it here but one quote by a local spokesperson condemning the Gatwick made it obvious that he had never even had the guts to step inside this amazing building. Yet he's quite happy to complain about it in a public newspaper. Perhaps I will "Name & Shame" this coward in an upcoming post. You can run but you can't hide from the blockchain! 😉
The Gatwick is now closed and through my discussions with the Twins I can tell they are not happy about how things have worked out. I would not be surprised if they personally have profited from the sale of the building and why shouldn't they have? They worked there for 40+ years.
However what they truly cared about was the welfare of their residents. From what I understand promises for rehousing and assistance were made by the local government and very few have been kept. I will call the Twins soon for an update but it sounds like the same old story of corruption to me! 😢
A Big Shout Out To Bella & Her Family!!!
During my time in The Gatwick I met a number of intelligent young teenagers who were mostly working at the food vans serving the homeless. One those amazing young people was Bella. She had been serving food to the homeless outside The Gatwick for years. For her final year school art project she wanted to photograph The Gatwick community.
Immediately I wanted to assist! Her father was not happy with her hanging out with a bunch of drug addicts in The Gatwick but her mother was amazing! Her mother organised a photo shoot with food, coffee, and chocolates! What a legend! So a big heartfelt jockey shout out to Bella and her family! Many of these portraits of Gatwick crew were thanks to this beautiful family! 😃
I hope this post inspires Bella to save her money on university, join Steemit and get into crypto!
If you want to know more about my wild adventures in the Gatwick just let me kow I have many wonderful posts I can write! 😃
Image sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8, 9.
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