After being kicked out of home, he relied on the ad-hoc generosity of friends and their families, sometimes couch surfing for weeks at a time.

When he had nowhere to go, he slept under a bridge where he cooked on a makeshift fire and slept in his clothes to try and keep warm.

He ended up in intensive care at John Hunter Hospital with swine flu, pneumonia and respiratory illness.

‘‘Ever since I have come out of hospital I have been trying to get my life on track and doing all the right kind of stuff,’’ he said.

At the time of this interview he was in contact with Newcastle Youth Accommodation Services Ltd and Mission Australia and was about to move into a share house, start a new job, and was positive about making a new start.

James, 16:

THE way 16-old James puts it, he never really ‘‘got along well’’ with his parents.

He was abused by his father up until the age of six, which ended when he moved interstate with his mother.

It wasn’t until high school, during a domestic violence talk in the classroom that it dawned on James what had occurred.

‘‘That’s when it came rushing back to me,’’ he said.

He suffered depression and anxiety and life at home with his mother became unbearable because he decided she must have known what took place.

‘‘I was thinking you probably would have known, you would have seen it and you would have seen bruises and that kind of thing, but she didn’t do anything about it.

‘‘And that’s what really got to me because as a mother, she’s supposed to protect her children.’’

James left home and couch surfed, moving from house to house, staying with friends.

He attempted to move back home but it lasted two weeks.

‘‘She held a knife to my throat and was going to stab me, and I thought, ‘Well, that’s the final straw.’’

He couch surfed for about three more months, during which time he became increasingly anxious and depressed, wondering whether he was intruding.

He was offered a bed at a crisis refuge but found it impossible to cope with people he didn’t know.

‘‘That was really impacting on my anxiety,’’ James said. ‘‘I was only there for a few hours.’’

After another period of couch surfing he was been offered a place in a share house, and a job at a book store.

‘‘The hardest part has been telling people about what happened to me with my Dad,’’ he said.

‘‘(But) if that hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t be the person who I am today.’’

*Audra, 21(not her real name)

AUDRA grew up with a shopaholic for a mother who got involved with a string of increasingly abusive men and provided a very unstable home.

She was largely responsible for the care of her five sisters, the youngest aged 12 months.

‘‘It would all get a bit hectic, just the way the house was run and my mum wouldn’t pay much attention to what was happening with us girls,’’ she said.

‘‘My sister, who was two years younger than me, was sort of like the baby sitter and I was doing the cleaning and making the food for all the girls.

‘‘Every now and then she’d make some sort of a meal but usually she would buy some stuff or get me or one of my other sisters to go shopping for food ... like packet pasta, just things like that, so I’d have to cook whatever I could for my sisters.’’

She went to 15 different schools before she left school in Year 9.

Instead of going to school she would hang out and smoke pot, or sometimes take drugs from her mother’s medicine cabinet, spending days away at a time on ‘‘weird benders’’ at random people’s houses, a lot of which she doesn’t remember.

She was regularly being kicked out of home, and would sleep on the street or at friends’ houses.

‘‘There was a time when I stayed at the back of a pre-school, using mats for blankets.

‘‘It happened a few times, then three days later the police would come looking for me and say my mum’s looking for me...

‘‘It was really confusing for me.’’

Nobody outside the family knew what was going on at home.

By the age of 13 she was self-harming, and she remembers a three-month stint in hospital.

‘‘I can’t really remember, but I did kind of like being there because it was something I didn’t have at home - feeling secure. And I would get taken care of in hospital, people would care what I was thinking and that didn’t happen at home.’’

She went back into hospital after another suicide attempt at about age 16.

‘‘I couldn’t handle living with my mum and her boyfriend at that time ... so my mum’s friend helped me get a referral to Samaritans.’’

Audra is now living in student accommodation. She still fears for the health and safety of her younger sisters, and her mother.

Emily, 19

Emily left home at 15 to escape an older man with whom she’d had an abusive relationship.

‘‘I’ve blocked out a lot, I still don’t remember some of the incidents,’’ she said.

‘‘I don’t think I was mentally capable to deal with it. I looked happy on the outside but I was really scattered on the inside.

‘‘I felt the worst I’ve ever felt.’’

She moved in with another family, agreeing to look after the mother’s children in return for board, but the children were close to her in age, and the woman was ‘‘a little bit crazy’’.

After about three months she packed a bag and headed for Byron Bay.

She spent the first night sleeping at the back of a bin shelter with a friend.

‘‘I was really cool with sleeping in the bush when my friend was there but once she was gone I thought, ‘I don’t know if this is going to be alright’.

‘‘I didn’t want to go back home because I was kind of happy leaving the area, and I felt a lot older than I was, I guess.’’

She tried the local hostels but they were closed or full.

‘‘I tried to stay at a homeless kids’ place but because I wasn’t from the area they said I couldn’t stay there, which I was pretty bummed about, because that was like my last resort. I didn’t know what I was going to do after that.

‘‘It was pretty shoddy. I was kind of like, man, I’m kind of stuck here.’’

With nowhere to go, she caught an overnight bus to Newcastle.

She went to her an aunt and uncle and ended up staying about a year in their house.

‘‘It was a strange environment to be in. I lived in their attic. ‘It was really uncomfortable. I was lost, really lost ... it kind of all hit me afterwards.’’

Over the next couple of years she bounced between living with her mother, at friends’ houses, and living on the move, sleeping in bushes, on beaches, and makeshift campsites.

‘‘Now I travel because I like to travel, but then, I would travel because I was just running away, always running away.

‘‘I felt if I felt comfortable, something would go wrong again.’’

At the time of this interview, Emily was preparing to travel with her boyfriend, with a campervan in tow.

Zac, 18

A cross-dresser with a broad outlook on life, Zac left the home he shared with his mother and brother in an isolated country town seeking opportunities - to ‘‘be himself’’ and get on with his life.

‘‘I lived on a farm 50 km away from everything so I couldn’t have friends, I was very unsocial for the reason that I was so far away from everything,’’ he said.

‘‘So I moved here so I could make friends and go shopping and get my own food and pretty much so I could grow up and get a job and see how that was. It was easy for me, it was just hard for my mum.’’

Zac now lives with three other boys in supported accommodation run by the Newcastle Youth Accommodation Service in Newcastle.

He is optimistic about the future, with plans to find full-time work and live independently.

‘‘Most of the people accessing this service are doing it because of accommodation issues so they get along with everybody, and I get on with them so much, we go out, we go have fun ...

‘‘We all get along fantastically.’’