Canberra man Richard McMillan lived in his car for a year in the bitter cold and searing heat of the national capital when a work injury caused him to lose his job, his house and his sense of security.
"In wintertime, I used to get the gas cooker and turn that on and that used to warm the car up," he said.
Then he lived in a van for a further two years. But he never gave up hope that he would work again and have his own home once more.
"I've never really given up on anything," he said.
"And I've always wanted to work. I've been working since I was 17 years old."
Four years after suffering his back injury, when he was working in the loading dock for a big retailer in Canberra, Mr McMillan is now working full-time as a security guard and is renting a house in Gordon with his 20-year-old son.
"Once I got my foot into the workplace, it was just uphill from there," he said.
"That's my advice to everyone who is homeless - the first thing you have to do is find yourself an income."
Mr McMillan hopes his story will inspire others, including the homeless people he passes outside shopping centres, with whom he shares a painful kinship.
"There's been a few homeless people over at the Calwell shops and I've actually bought them pies. Because I know what it's like. It's not nice."
It was a moment in time four years ago that Mr McMillan's whole world was turned upside down. He was injured at work but his employer did not recognise it as a work injury because it happened on a Friday but Mr McMillan did not start to feel sore until the next day, the weekend, when he was not at work. His sick leave soon ran out.
The softly-spoken 48-year-old is matter-of-fact about what happened next.
"Because of that I couldn't afford my rent and I had to give up my house. I stayed with my ex for a little while in a caravan in the backyard but things got a little but tough there," he said.
"And I ended up having to live in my car. And I was in there for almost a year and I was staying out near the tip on Mugga Lane.
"I was asleep in my car and I got woken up by four people. They claimed they were police. They produced a badge. In the end, they turned out to be just junkies. I got beaten up. They smashed all the front of my face. I lost my front teeth.
"Lost my car, lost everything. Ended up getting my car back, but it was totally destroyed and everything was gone.
"I was just lucky that a friend of mine who used to live next door had a van and he gave me the van. So I lived in that for two years."
Mr McMillan wanted to do work that could accommodate his long-term injury. He found it frustrating not being able to make his own way.
"After I'd hurt my back, my doctor advised that I apply for the pension, some sort of disability pension but Centrelink wouldn't give it to me. They kept swapping me from job network to job network and eventually I got connected with Workways," he said.
"They were the only job network that did anything. The others were more interested in [making me apply for inappropriate jobs].
"I mean I'm not a university-degree student , so I've got no hope of getting the jobs. And the jobs I was able to apply for, they were taken before you even could apply or I never got a reply and it was basically a waste of time and petrol."
The breakthrough finally came when he was connected in Canberra with Workways Australia, a not-for-profit organisation has been operating for more than 30 years to assist the long-term unemployed to get meaningful employment and education.
Within a couple of months, he got a call from Workways to say there may be a job that would work for him, as a security guard checking in on government buildings.
"From there on, I did my security course, I did my first aid course. With the help of Workways, I got boots for work and transport to start with to get to work and everything like that. I wouldn't have been able to do it without their help," Mr McMillan said.
"Two years later, I'm in full-time work. Got a real stable job. I enjoy it. I've got all intentions of probably staying until I retire.
"The job gave me enough money to save up for a bond for a house and I moved into a house with my son."
Mr McMillan is telling his story in a sunny office of Workways in the Woden Centre. Outside the cold wind is howling down from the mountains.
His story comes in the midst of National Homelessness Week this week. The last Census in 2016 revealed that 116,000 Australians are classified as homeless and for every rough sleeper on streets, park benches, in public toilets, tents and under bridges, there are there are 13 others sleeping in a car, couch surfing, in refuges or transitional houses or in severely overcrowded housing.
The Salvation Army has used National Homelessness Week to draw attention to the alarming reduction in life expectancy of those without stable housing. New research has shown being homeless multiplies the risk of early death between three and seven times, to a national average of 50 years. A third of such premature deaths have been found to be preventable, the result of illnesses that are amenable to treatment.
Mr McMillan didn't want to become a statistic.
Workways regional manager ACT and Victoria, Marcus Caldwell, can't help but smile to know that his organisation was able to help Mr McMillan get back on this feet.
"It's what we come to work for. It's what gives you that feeling that you're doing something worthwhile," Mr Caldwell said.
"We're in that space of helping the most disadvantaged and Richard certainly fit that criteria when he first came to us.
"We only made a very small contribution to his story. He did most of it himself. But we were at least able to facilitate and point him in the right direction so it's exactly what our business is about. So it's great. I love it."
Mr Caldwell said Workways was concentrating on providing meaningful and long-term work for people with a diagnosed disability and ensuring the job was the "right fit" for the individual.
Mr McMillan found his fit. And he now enjoys the simple pleasures that were denied him when he was homeless. The thing he now enjoys the most?
"To sleep in a bed. A comfortable bed," he said.
