Trevor - the rubbish king - is regularly seen around Darwin, doing what he sees as his God given work - keeping the place clean. He picks up the rubbish the paid rubbish people leave behind!
His work appears on my blog here - http://monsoon-frog.blogspot.com/2010/05/art-installation-by-trevor.html
Darwin has a tolerant attitude to the odd bod........and has had for a long time. The motto, well known elsewhere of "do no harm" applies. If a bit odd, but doing no harm, well....., tolerate!
Trevor is a bit more than a garbo......read the op ed piece, which he wrote - below. Sort of says it all. It is a motto, a call to arms for the world of being a bit more caring and tolerant. While not being religious or evoking religion, it does have a ring similar to a few of the great people leaders around the world - from Christ, to Martin Luther King and Gandhi in recent times. Tolerance and care for the fellow man.
Read it yourself......
Towards a world embracing us all
Trevor Jenkins - is well known in Darwin for his work cleaning up rubbish. Ahead of Anti-Poverty Week, the man also known as the Rubbish Warrior, who was homeless for several years, argues that many may choose to ignore poverty and misunderstand those who are in that situation, but the poor and the homeless have their own strengths that enrich us all.
PAIN and human suffering is an important resource. It can be as rich as minerals, as powerful as diamonds. It is more prolific than sex.
It's more than a base from which to write welfare programs. It's an entry point into people's lives that is a gift to us all and enriches our lives.
Poverty allows us to once again see the distance we have placed between ourselves and others.
Human pain and human suffering on the street is paradoxically what makes some human beings rich in survival skills: resilience, humanity, acceptance, humour, resourcefulness, mateship, friendship and loyalty.
People are living with pain, living with disability, and living with abuse and terror. Courage in adversity is an Australian gift we value think of the Anzacs.
Today these gifts, very visible in people suffering on the streets, have been overlooked and pushed away in our headlong pursuit of success, comfort, grandeur, programs, plans, ideologies, and careers. When reallife human suffering is right outside our doors it is all too much.
People say success breeds success and like-minded people should congregate together. If you don't succeed you are judged as having a loser mentality and told it's "your own fault for thinking that way".
People say: "Don't blame me for not wasting my time with negative thinking people like you."
Social and community thinking about poverty does not accept failures, reality, trying hard, earning respect, acceptance of suffering or humility. Instead, it's about appearances, about looking good, feeling great and hiding the truth.
When somebody doesn't hide their true suffering and their true, lived self, better watch out because they might spread their pain and destroy themselves, us and society.
I see all this on the street, and I look on in dismay at a society in love with its own image, its own self and its own plans. A society in which an honest, hardworking, single, poor man with good morals and values is somehow mentally ill. Where it's crazy to love, crazy to think and dream, crazy to be free and alive.
It upsets and saddens me, but it inspires me, too, to overcome my own ill ridden fears and challenge the status quo. And I love people all the same.
I intend to fight for myself and others in similar positions, hopefully helping to teach a society to truly love again.
Anti-Poverty Week events in the NT will run from Monday October 17 to Thursday October 20.
[Article by T Jenkins sourced from NT News October 15 - but too good to not disseminate further!]
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