Heart of the community: Brenda McCulloch

Hanging up the apron

Story and photograph by Poppy Fitzpatrick.

All people have a path cut out for them, Brenda McCulloch tells me with conviction; she’s just glad her path led to the Hutt Street Centre. After twenty-five years as head chef and serving countless comforting meals to Adelaide’s homeless population, Brenda hung up her apron for the last time just a few months ago.

Now, she’s taking some well deserved time to slow down and reflect on her time at the centre and her pride in being part of a team who provide support to almost two thousand homeless people every year.

In 1979, armed with a twelve-month working visa, Brenda left her home in Scotland to explore down under. It didn’t take long for her to realise she wanted to stay. After moving between kitchen jobs in various states, an ad for a position at the Hutt Street Centre appeared in April 1994. In a pool of eighty-two applicants, Brenda didn’t even get an interview. But in an act of ‘divine providence,’ as a nun at the centre later described it, Brenda decided to simply call and ask, ‘what’s going on?’ This follow-up scored her an interview the next day, and she was offered the job.

Brenda has a refreshingly honest, thick-skinned, tough-love approach to life. She attributes this to years of experience, and what she refers to as an ‘unfiltered’ education on human beings. But it soon becomes clear that she has a far softer side than she first lets on. Slightly glassy-eyed, Brenda recalls the moment she realised the centre had got into her blood: ‘it was a Friday morning and a man came in for breakfast, and straight away I wondered what he was doing there. He didn’t look like a homeless person.’ Noticing the man crying during breakfast, Brenda approached him and asked how they could help. He told Brenda how, without a dollar to his name, he’d hitchhiked all the way from Sydney, trying to reach his terminally ill son in Perth. Although such circumstances were usually beyond their power to help, one of the nuns decided to access her ‘magic red purse,’ an accumulation of money saved from recycled bottles and small donations. ‘We had that man on a plane at two-thirty in the afternoon,’ Brenda tells me. ‘He got to Perth and he saw his son before he passed away.’

It was this ability to help people in a real way that compelled Brenda to get herself out of bed at four in the morning, Monday through Friday, for all of the ensuing years. She has seen the Hutt Street Centre expand from a team of seven paid staff to seventy, who now serve Adelaide’s homeless population over 40,000 meals every year. The centre also offers further support beyond breakfast and lunch, including access to education and training, assistance in finding housing, and health and social services.

With over two hundred guests each day, Brenda’s role as head chef went far beyond the confines of the kitchen. At times a stern crowd controller and mediator, at other times a gentle and nurturing mentor or friend – her job title didn’t even begin to describe what was an incredibly multi-faceted position. Despite my admiration of her impressive stint as head chef, in her unwavering humbleness, Brenda insists that she is most proud of the growth of the centre as a whole.

After so many years of service, Brenda says she has earned her own set of keys, and forged an unbreakable connection to the organisation and its people. There’s no doubt she will be hanging around. Now volunteering her time to give talks about homelessness and the centre at schools and businesses, she also hopes to contribute more to her local community in Port Noarlunga. As she enters retirement, Brenda is enjoying slower mornings, reading books, focusing on her relationship, and soaking in the beauty of the Fleurieu.

‘I’ve always said I’ll never buy a lottery ticket, because I got to come and live in Australia, I got my job at Hutt Street and I met my partner,’ she says. ‘So, I’ve had all the luck anyone deserves. Life is very good.’

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