BREAKING THE ICE

As the rates of meth addiction sweep Australia at an alarming pace, access to rehabilitation facilities has become increasingly challenging - particularly for addicts in isolated rural towns. In the face of rising deaths, Ginger Gorman shines a light on one Australian community that has bravely fought back

- Ginger Gorman

Patsy feels lucky that the neat two-bedroom unit she bought in 2017 is surrounded by a courtyard of fragrant rose bushes. "That way I can pick them whenever I like, and take them to the cemetery," she says.

We drive slowly down her street towards the graveyard, take a few turns then make our way past the house where her beloved youngest son, Lenny, died by drug-induced suicide in 2017. He was 25 years old.

Patsy, 62, gestures towards the enamel photograph set into Lenny's shining black granite headstone: "That was taken on our last Christmas together and he looks wonderful. He's got piercing eyes." She kneels down, staring into her son's face. "I wanted to do some of this interview at Lenny's grave because the hard truth is - if you can't survive your addiction, this is where you end up. This is where your family will have to come to see you." The eucalypts are undulating in the hot breeze. The wind moves through the grass in slow waves and birds are soft but persistent in their calls. "As beautiful as this cemetery is, it's not where I want Lenny to be," Patsy says.

She lays her home-grown roses beside the grave, alongside other trinkets and mementos: a ceramic angel, a cigarette, some potted succulent plants, items that mark Lenny's Indigenous ancestry. The flowers are already wilting in the heat and giving off perfume. Pointing at a warming tin of alcohol, she remarks: "Today, someone's left him a can of bourbon and Coke. It's comforting to me to know that people haven't forgotten him, that they come and visit him from time to time. It's lovely."