There has been controversy about the number of homeless people setting up camp at the showground, with some residents stating they no longer felt safe walking in the area.

Alex, who is living in a tent attached to one of the stables, said he could understand people being concerned with so many people now living at the showground.

“We are just trying to survive,” he said.

“Lots of people walk their dogs here and sometimes it feels like they are looking down on us. It is hard sometimes. It gets us down.

“So many people come here to help us but so many people look down at us. They don’t know what it is like until you lose everything.”

Around a dozen campsites have been set up at the showground, with Alex saying it would be good if the community was more understanding of their plight.

He believed having the homeless in one location worked.

“At least this way all the homeless people know who are homeless and can look out for each other,” he said.

“It is a blessing in disguise. We make sure each other has food, we all go to the same free meals and keep each other company.”

He said if they weren’t staying at the showground they would be back in town or on trains.

“The big question would be, where would we go?”

“Police and rangers encourage us to go to the Homeless Hub and get what help we can and then to go to the showground to camp. We pay our camping fees to the men at the Men’s Shed.”

As strong winds roared over the Shoalhaven on Wednesday morning and most of us were tucked up warm at home or inside our place of work, they were battling the elements in their makeshift campsites.

For many, it’s what they now call home.

They were trying to stay warm and in many cases just trying to hang on to what meagre belongings they have so they didn’t blow away.

“The last week has been tough,” he said.

“There has been so much rain, we haven’t been able to get things washed or dry. And then last night the winds came. It was wild.

“The wind was so strong it snapped a pole in the tent.

“I basically got into the bottom of my tent and watched the roof which was coming over me, popping back up, then coming over me again.

“It was pretty hard to sleep with everything flapping in the wind.

“At 3am I had to get up and do some repair works.

“The stakes would no longer hold, so I had to find some heavy things to stop it [the tent] from blowing away.”

He talks of battling temperatures over the past week which have dropped overnight to as low as four degrees.

“A few of the guys were saying how depressing it was. Especially this last week when we haven’t been able to get anything dry,” he said.

“It would be much easier if it was summer rather than winter.”

He said the Shoalhaven Homeless Hub had been “a godsend”.

“They help us wherever they can,” he said.

“If it wasn’t for them, the Aboriginal Medical Service and Oolong House I don’t know where I’d be.”