Orange Sky Laundry van provides a boost for Melbourne's homeless   

Date
    July 1, 2015
    The Age

It might seem a small gesture, but clothes washing caused big smiles at Batman Park by the Yarra River on Wednesday.   

Michael Jager, Tony Bautista and Steve Cook were among the first Melburnians to try out the Orange Sky Laundry van, a free mobile laundry service for the homeless, and gave rave reviews.   

Steve Cook, 36, said it felt "sweet" to be wearing a clean windcheater, tracksuit pants and beanie. He sleeps under a bridge at Docklands. He said Orange Sky was a "mad" idea, but a great one.   

He usually uses a coin laundry at a backpacker hostel to wash clothes, but he lives on a tiny trust allowance and doesn't always have the cash.


"Every time you put clean clothes on you feel better," he said. "You don't look like a Chat [bad], you don't feel dirty. You feel better about yourself."

Michael Jager, 30, said some charities only have one machine and there are long queues. He said he was raised with the importance of have clean clothes, "and I even separate my dark wash and my white wash because my Mum always told me to do so".

Friends Nic Marchesi, 20, and Lucas Patchett, 21, founded Orange Sky Laundry in their home town, Brisbane, in September last year. At the time they lived with their parents and didn't do their own washing.

The first Orange Sky van now visits 10 Brisbane locations, five days a week, staffed by 40 volunteers.

In January, they launched a second van that tours the Gold Coast.   

Now with a $30,000 grant from airline Jetstar, Mr Marchesi and Mr Patchett are starting a van in Melbourne.

It takes $70,000 to set up a van, and about $10,000 a year to run it, which they raise through corporate and public donations. The two washing machines and two dryers run on a diesel generator, and the water is from a 270-litre tank and a grey water system.

The van's name comes from the song Orange Sky by British musician Alexi Murdoch about helping your brother.

Mr Marchesi and Mr Patchett have signed up 10 Melbourne volunteers, and are seeking 90 more.

Jim Davison, kitchen director of the charity Many Rooms, has invited Orange Sky to trial their mobile laundry from 8am to 1pm this Saturday at its drop-in program at North Melbourne community centre.

About one-quarter of Many Rooms clients were homeless and others are from boarding houses and housing commission flats where washing machines were often faulty or non existent.

Danusia Kaska, St Vincent de Paul Victoria's soup van operations manager, said the mobile laundry was "a great service" and her organisation was considering a partnership.

She said some clients only have the clothes they wear, so in Melbourne's cold they would need warm replacement clothes, perhaps from an op shop, to wear while they wait for their clothes to wash and dry. They would also need a changing tent.

now that sounds like a good idea... do the clothes come out all pressed and ready to wear?....

what happens if some of it all falls apart....bad stuff happens...do they have showers handy so the clean gear can go on clean bodies???...

meals on wheels now washing on wheels....

the future is looking rosey..

cods wrote on Jul 2^nd, 2015 at 9:48am:



I don't take them in cods, it would be foolish to let strangers sleep in my house when I live alone, but I used to work with the pie van standing beside the police beat giving pies, cup a soup and coffee/tea and milo for the kids. The youngest was eight, the oldest was old and a woman who looked nine months pregnant, the rest....just ordinary people down on their luck.

I know some homeless men that sleep in the reserve and I quite often take them sandwiches and apples or oranges, it's still risky, but I take my dog, my mobile and my personal alarm.

Ex Dame Pansi wrote on Jul 2^nd, 2015 at 10:01am:


No. It's just their definition of disadvantaged is different to yours. Abbott views a one-percenter with a cash flow problem as disadvantaged.

Poor people don't register on Abbott's perception.