“Life can be brutal, and life can be beautiful. Life is ‘Brutiful’.”

These are the words of Bobbie, an insightful elderly gentlemen living with severe depression in a large mental health boarding house in Bondi. He and 11 other long-term sufferers of mental health conditions and disabilities call this boarding house home.

After visiting their home one day, we came out feeling completely dejected. We thought about it for a while and realised that the home itself wasn’t much of a home at all. It was dark, dreary and had little to no creativity or love attached to it. If these people were living in such a bleak home, how could they be expected to face the world with optimism and hope?

That was it. We decided to put our time to good use. We shouted out to the Sydney community and boy, did they answer. Our call for donations of bright, colourful and cheerful artworks, paintings and pictures was met with such overwhelming kindness and vigour.

We had a tradie stop by the house and affix these awesome pieces of art to the walls all over the massive boarding house. The boarders were absolutely stoked! Bobbie actually went and sat in the living for the very first time since he’d been there. He told us the bright painting in there reminded him of his childhood and his mother.

We returned to the house and decided to surprise the Bobbie by doing up his bedroom with wonderfully bright artworks and he told us that all his Christmases had come at once. To hear that from someone who struggles with severe depression was honestly such a joy.

We cannot describe just how thankful we are to the Sydney community for banding together, not just in this instance, but for every single soul we’ve gone out of our way to help.