“To me, when I think about the phrase walk a mile in my boots, I can see that I’ve come a long way on my journey. You’ve got to keep walking forward with your head up. You make the most of it.”
Perry has been coming to Hutt St Centre for about twenty years. He slept in a swag near Hutt St Centre for months, until his case manager helped Perry find a home of his own.
“We don’t know what people have experienced until we’ve walked in their boots to understand what they’re going through. If you could walk in their boots just for a day, how do you think you would feel? Would you learn anything from it?”
Perry still comes to Hutt St Centre regularly for meals, creating art, and catching up with people.
“I’ve found a lot of love at Hutt St and have been cared for by the staff. You've got everything here. You've got Services Australia, you've got food, you've got washing, you've got everything that a person needs to survive. I’ve got no family around here, so Hutt St is my family.”
In celebration of Walk a Mile in My Boots 2025, Perry painted a special pair of boots.
“I just love painting and putting my art out there. Seeing other people enjoy it gives me more enjoyment. I’ve been painting since I was a kid. My nannas showed me how and I always think of them when I’m painting. It’s spiritual for me – I feel a sense of belonging to things like Indigenous art, or memories of my nannas, good things.”
“I’m a Noongar, from South Perth in a pretty isolated town. And my family – my dad’s side is Yamatji and my mum’s side is Noongar.”
“A lot of inner soul goes into painting. There’s no mapping out my ideas, I just got the pair of boots and started painting them – then the creative process takes over. I’m fascinated by it, I dunno where it comes from really.”
Perry drew inspiration from Dreamtime and native animals and plants to tell stories through his boots painting.
“One boot is of the land and animals, the other one’s the fresh water. There are everlasting flowers and all these animals feed on them. There’s a frog in the water and he travels spiritually. His power is that he’s a human disguised in different ways as animals, like a frog. On the back of one of the boots is two men sitting around yarning.”
Perry has come a long way on his journey to homefulness since first walking into Hutt St Centre. And he knows firsthand the impact your support makes.
“I hope people remember that it’s easy to write other people off just on how their situation looks or from seeing them on the street. But everyone is someone’s kid, or someone’s parent, or grandparent. There’s always more to it than we can see.”
Your support enables Hutt St Centre to provide essential services to people who are sleeping rough or in need of assistance, empowering them to rebuild their lives for a better future.
