When you leave your husband you end up with nothing a lot of the time. It's like your house has burnt down but nobody cares. No-one wants to know about it and you have to start again.
My husband had an alcohol problem, but he told me he was going to change. It interfered with his work and relationships. He told me that he was going to change and I was stupid enough to believe him.
Not knowing a lot about addiction I thought I could help him to control his habit, but as stresses in his life and our lives got bigger he just went back to the alcohol. I was pregnant and trying to feed our four children and he lost jobs because he was drinking.
I tried to regulate him by cutting down the amount of alcohol he could drink, but it just made him angry towards me. Every time he'd drink, he'd take it out on my eldest son and me.
I didn't have any money and we had nowhere else to go. I had a son in high school, so I couldn't just pull him out and go back to where I grew up. I had nobody there anyway. It was quite embarrassing and I was ashamed because I didn't want to say that I had put my children in a situation where we had nowhere to live.
I had my sister. We stayed with her one night, but I could tell that she couldn't handle having us there. I rang the homelessness place to try and get us some temporary accommodation till I could figure out what to do. They put us in a hotel for a week and then we went to a refuge.
From the refuge, Mission Australia provided us with temporary accommodation in a transitional property. The accommodation was good. It was really good. It was a furnished property with beds and linen. They'd given us everything because I had left with nothing except my car.
I though I'd be there [at the transitional house] for less than three months. I thought that my husband would decide that his family was more important than his drinking. He'd actually gotten worse. We were in the transitional housing for a year in the end because it was hard to find a new home. Also because I was hoping I might be able to go back to the relationship.
I started looking for a house to rent. Having an excellent rental history I thought in would be quite easy, but when you are looking for a place with five children it isn't. Many don't want to rent to a single mum with five kids.
I used to think that people who can't find a place to live must have done something wrong. They must have ruined a house or something like that. Or not paid their rent.
I didn't realise it was something that could happen to anybody just because of circumstances that are beyond your control. I didn't think that children would be seen as a liability in renting a house or realise the stigma attached to being a single mum.
Just because you have a large family and you're by yourself doesn't mean you should have nowhere to live. I only found about four places we could afford. There are not a lot of properties to choose from, so the real estate agents and the owners can be very very picky about whom they rent to here.
They'd rather get someone who's a working couple or an older couple and I can understand that as well. I felt like I was at the bottom of the list.
Eventually we found this three-bedroom house. It was stressful to move, but it still felt good to have our own home and to have our things in it. We've got a 12 month lease now and it's really nice.
I haven't told a lot of my friends what happened. I felt embarrassed to be homeless. It was embarrassing to me that I'd done that to my children.
