Mike Fish was born in 1954 and completed his education at various schools in the western suburbs. After an injury he gave Ruby League away at 39yrs and took a ‘fill-in job’ with the City of Sydney in 1990. This ‘fill-in job’ lasted 29 years, with the first 17 years being in City’s Cleansing team.
With so many years cleaning the streets in Woolloomooloo, Kings Cross and the South Sydney areas, Mike knew the streets and its people well. Over the years he built a strong rapport with the homeless people in these areas and negotiated ways they could have some agency in deciding how the Cleansing team worked in and around their makeshift homes.
In 2006/07 Mike was encouraged to apply for a new position with the City’s Homeless Unit. His sense of humour, his proactive approach and his belief in creating a level playing field in communications and negotiations, (with all stakeholders), saw him being an integral member of the Unit. He believed his years playing football toughened him up, so he wasn’t worried about walking into places that others didn’t want to go, nor being ‘pushed’ or shoved’ a little.
Mike retired in August 2018 after 29 years of service with the City. He loved his job and the people he worked with.
Oh well, I become a team leader… in Cleansing. And originally I was in Glebe for a little bit and then there was business over in Woolloomooloo Depot when we got from South Sydney, they wanted me to go over and fix things up over there. And I went over there. And Woolloomooloo, Kings Cross, major, major homeless population. And it was an absolute nightmare cleaning the streets around Woolloomooloo, especially where Matthew Talbot was. I just got fed up with it one day, and after the Cleansing team had left, and the coppers had left – because we had the coppers there every day. We had two paddy wagons just so we could clean the streets. This was ridiculous to me, you know.
08:54 MF To move them. And if anyone played up or we were throwing out excess rubbish and they said ‘No, that’s mine’, they’d get quite nasty. And we needed the police there. And this to me was absolute stupidity. And so one day I left and I walked back around. And you could pick out what we used to call anchors, the guys that sort of run the show. I went back and talked to them. And I said ‘I’m going to come here every day. You’re going to be here every day. Let’s work something out.’ So we did. On one side of the Talbot Lane one day, so we’d pressure clean and clean it spot-less. Got rid of the big stuff. And then the next day they’d move to the other side, so. And any excess material, they actually threw it into the back of the truck themselves. And it worked like a dream. They were happy, because they were involved. They had input on how we did things. And they were happy, really happy.
09:55 And they maintained that area themselves, because they were part of the solution. Coppers loved it, because they didn’t have to come there every day. In the finish, they didn’t come at all. And the City had a homeless unit then – I didn’t even know about – and they heard about that. And so they said, hang on, if it works there, it should work everywhere. So it was quite funny, they called for positions and I was talked into applying for it. Bear in mind I’d been in Cleansing for all this time, 17-odd years. And it was like a security blanket for me. I knew it inside out, back to front. I’d helped organise cleaning for Mardi Gras, New Year’s Eve and all that type of thing. But I applied, and probably the best move I’ve ever made.
