Wayne’s View

It’s a stunner of a view from Wayne’s 10th floor whare. He can gaze out across Te Aro to Wellington Harbour and Mt Victoria.

It’s almost the perfect reverse of his view during the winter of 2018. That was from the slopes of Mt Victoria, from a tent hidden in the bush.

“The cold didn’t bother me so much,” he says, remembering, as David Bowie plays ‘China Girl’ on his radio. “But the rain… I’d have to walk down to Frank Kitts Park to charge my phone. I’d sit there in the freezing cold and rain while it was charging. I’d be totally soaked by the time I walked home and couldn’t get warm.”

Often he’d also be soaked with sweat too, as Wayne was ill – so ill he expected to die.

After living in Australia for 20 years, working as a software engineer, Wayne started to get sick. “I had a great job and everything was going sweet. Then I got really, really sick. It was an over-active thyroid, but I didn’t know. I had a bad doctor who wasn’t medicating me how I should have been.

“My health was going downhill really fast. Basically my doctor said I needed surgery but couldn’t have it because I was too sick, and he couldn’t get me well enough. So, I stopped going to the doctor.

“I really thought I was dying, so I gave up. I gave everything I had away. I just walked away. I thought I’d come home see my family and just die.”

With only a bit of money to sustain him through what he thought would be his final weeks, Wayne came back to New Zealand, visiting family in Dunedin, Christchurch and Palmerston North, often also sleeping in national parks as he travelled around.

About six months later he ended up in Wellington, pitching his tent on Mt Victoria. “I don’t know why I ended up here. I just did. I was really sick by then – I couldn’t walk 100 metres without being soaked in sweat.

“I got on the benefit and was eating at the Soup Kitchen every day, and then I heard about DCM. So I went down to Lukes Lane to find some food. I saw how the DCM people interacted with everyone, so I thought, ‘Maybe these guys aren’t too bad’.

“It was pretty cool that I could go to Te Hāpai for free coffee and kai. I also had a couple of teeth pulled at the dentist at DCM. Oh, that was a lifesaver. I was in so much pain. And I met Alan.”

Alan Norman is one of DCM’s social workers who works to support people into housing and back into life. Alan talked Wayne through the process of getting a council flat.

“It took me about four weeks to apply, because I’d just given up,” Wayne reminds Alan, who still visits him in his whare. “Even after I met Alan, I hadn’t yet made up my mind to do anything about my health. I was quite prepared to die. I was so depressed and just didn’t care.

“But Alan sat me down and talked to me. Eventually I took his advice and filled in the forms for a house and turned things around.”

A week after handing in the forms, Wayne had an interview for a flat. Then he had the keys for his own place – a big change after nearly a year of staying with relatives and sleeping in his tent.

“It was really quick. I remember sleeping here that first night without anything, before Alan helped me get some furniture. It was cool but very strange to be back in a house!”

Strange – but good. And it gave Wayne hope. So he contacted City GPs and got himself a new doctor, who’s treating his thyroid properly.

“She’s amazing. Within four weeks my health had improved so much. There may be on-going side-effects from my over-active thyroid but we’re waiting to see.”

Wayne says he had a great life in Adelaide. Everything was going good – beyond some hair-raising brushes with life-threatening wildlife in the South Australian bush. “It was just my health that made me completely lose interest in life, in being part of society. I just thought if my number’s up, it’s up.”

But now Wayne’s back in society. He’s got a house, with a desk and laptop he can work away at, designing the 3D multi-player online games he’s always wanted to build but never had time while working as a software engineer.

“Once my health’s totally sorted, I’ll get back in the workforce. I’ll do anything, really. Cleaning toilets if I have to. But I don’t want to go back to software engineering – I want to do something more physical.

“I don’t care about all the stuff I gave away. None of that meant a heck of a lot to me. But I can’t believe I let myself get like that. I’m normally a positive person but it crept up on me. I didn’t even realise what I was like until I looked back.

“I won’t do that again, fingers crossed. But I think I know the warning signs now, having been through it once. And I know that DCM are there to support me; all I have to do is ask.”

Thank you to DCM kaitautoko Lee-Anne Duncan for this story and these images.