A southern woman moving mountains
Heather Pennycook traded the Southern Alps for a life helping Auckland’s vulnerable homeless. She speaks with Marjorie Cook.
As fire chief in the small Otago village of Makarora, Heather Pennycook had firsthand experience in helping traumatised car accident victims and injured trampers and comforting bereaved families.
The southern mountain woman estimates there were up to 15 motor vehicle emergencies in her patch each year, perhaps a handful of back-country searches, a few fires.
But last October, Pennycook decided to walk away from the solitude and all that defined her to tend to and the homeless of Auckland.
Pennycook’s new home is a small student hostel room in the heart of a sleepless city of 1.3 million people.
‘‘It’s been a little bit crazy, I absolutely love the solitude of the mountains,’’ she says. ‘‘So to be here in the CBD with police and fire sirens screaming five times a night, it is 180 degrees.
‘‘The best way for me to deal with it is to not focus on what I am missing in the wilderness and look for the things that are pretty cool around here. A key is being really grateful for what I have got.’’
The shift north was a big call for the Makarora-raised mother of two adult children who was, until recently, a Wanaka construction company office manager.
But it came from the heart. For several years, the active Christian had been participating in Revival School events in Te Anau and seeking a deeper understanding of her life calling.
‘‘Over a year ago my youngest child left home and the restlessness inside me to serve a bigger purpose than just myself, grew even stronger. I am a passionate follower of Jesus and love the way he cared for all the misfits and dregs of society. I knew this was the kind of person I wanted to be and the way I wanted to live my life moving forward.’’
As an active member of her church, she’d visited Auckland for training and been deeply moved by seeing homeless people living on the city streets.
In 2016, she asked Owen Pomona, a reformed drug dealer who ministers to Auckland’s homeless, if she could join him for a day. The experience left her feeling ‘‘set on fire’’.
‘‘I just felt I was in the right place at this time of my life.’’
Another motivation was to provide hope to people trapped in circumstances unimaginable to those in the rural south, where beggars and homeless are few and far between.
When she arrived in October, what struck her was the sheer scale of homelessness in Auckland, where an estimated 24,000 people live on the streets – about half of the nation’s homeless. She felt she couldn’t walk a city block without tripping over several street people.
‘‘I thought, ‘Oh my god, I cannot see this scale of misery and do nothing’.’’
In Auckland, she acts as a onewoman band and has not yet aligned with any particular church or charity.
However, she has connected with many groups already working with Auckland’s homeless people. She also helps Humanity New Zealand’s regular Wednesday feeds outside Auckland’s Central Public Library on Lorne Street.
Pennycook has created her own Facebook page – Kia Kaha: Hope for the Hope-less – to tell the stories of the homeless. She is considering turning it into a charitable trust.
She is committed to figuring out solutions.
‘‘I will be a city girl for some time. I intend to be here at least for three years. If I want to see change, I have to be prepared to plough some time into it.’’
Pennycook spent her formative years on Makarora Station, at the head of Lake Wanaka.
She was educated at Timaru Girls High School and had a peripatetic career working as anything from rousie to an events organiser at the Marriott Hotel, London.
Pennycook returned to live in Makarora, a village of about 90 people, in 2009, and prior to her shift north, was the Makarora fire chief, a Wanaka search and rescue team leader and Makarora Community Association chairwoman.
She takes heart from getting to do those big city activities that rural people don’t experience every day: beaches, the arts, wellstocked libraries, and diversity of people and food.
After five months working four to five days a week with Auckland’s homeless, Pennycook feels frustrated about the city’s lack of shelters.
Auckland’s last remaining night shelter, a 30-bed church-owned facility at the top of Airedale St, closed in 2012.
She’s aware of a new 80-bed City Mission building due in three years, but says this will not provide emergency shelter and won’t touch the tip of the iceberg.
Creating new shelters should be a key government and Auckland Council focus and would transform lives, but various groups’ suggestions of how to get some up and running quickly had been turned down, she says.
‘‘It is awesome that we are feeding and handing out warm clothes and sleeping bags but we need an emergency shelter. It needs council action.’’
Pennycook has observed that the items she pays for and gives to a person sleeping rough are often stolen within 48 hours. Or, the council identifies it as rubbish and throws it away.
She is pushing ‘‘for more than a feed, warm jersey, a hug and a ‘See you next week’’’.
‘‘In my heart I want to see them move on to a life with hope for a future.’’
Pennycook was recently overjoyed when a woman she’d been nurturing for several months managed to get herself off the streets ‘‘before a body bag was needed.
Just a few short weeks later, her friend was sober and managed to secure emergency housing, which hopefully can be extended until permanent housing is found.
‘‘In one moment she went from two years of sleeping on the cold, wet pavement often without any blankets, expecting violence and abuse every night, having anything she did own lost or stolen almost as soon as she was given it, to safety, warmth, her own lovely accommodation,’’ Pennycook says.
Change is a steep path for both women. There’s a risk of falling. But with faith, hope and charity, Pennycook hopes to cushion the landing. And move mountains.
‘‘It can be pretty exhausting emotionally, mentally and physically but imperative that I stay grounded in Christ and listening to his voice.
‘‘Sometimes it feels like one step forward and six steps back. But I do get the occasional victory and it is awesome to be making connections with all these people and being able to help where I can.’’
I thought, Oh my god, I cannot see this scale of misery and do nothing.
Heather Pennycook