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LONDON: Caravan parks are emerging as the home of last resort for ageing women with no money.

They were driven here in one of life’s desperate moments — now, not everyone wants to leave.

In the dim light of Cheryl’s home, there’s no sense of time.

The curtains are quickly drawn behind the rare visitor welcomed inside.

A flickering TV screen casts its pale light over a coffee table covered with cat food packets, medications and printouts of rental listings.

In the past few months, Cheryl has looked at over 50 rentals, obsessing over the idea of leaving the caravan park she moved into on a desperate Christmas Eve 14 years ago.

“I’ve been going out looking for flats because I’m sick of it,” she says.

“Nothing gets done for you but if anything goes wrong, your fault. But I’m just renting the dump, you know.”

Cheryl is one of the 120 residents living in the Fairfield West Caravan Park in Western Sydney.

She came here to hide from a troubled past but a temporary refuge became something more permanent.

“I wanted to get married, have a family and live in a little cottage with a picket fence and a beautiful garden,” she says.

“I got the beautiful garden, but I got no picket fence.”

A single woman in her 60s, Cheryl mostly keeps to herself. She doesn’t even speak to her family anymore.

When Cheryl was 22, there was a knock on the door and her four children were taken away.

The last time she called her children, they told her they thought she was dead.

It was an even more traumatic event — something she’s not yet ready to talk about — that eventually led Cheryl to find the park. But she lives in hope her fortunes might soon change.

She’s found a three-bedroom rental in Guildford and plans to inspect it later this week, a freestanding house for the same rent as the one-bedder she currently shares with her cats Coco and Patch.

When Cheryl was driven here all those years ago, fearful and desperate, the park was the hiding place she needed.

She lights up a smoke, grabs a fly swat and takes a swipe at a scuttling cockroach.

“Mongrels. They are real bastards, they are.”

Down a sliver of a driveway, next to a busy 7Eleven petrol station on Polding Street, Fairfield West, is a place you can only find if you’re looking for it.

Its only marker is a burnt-out sign that no longer lights up.

Hemmed in by suburban homes of brick and weatherboard, rows of white boxes in various states of disrepair line the narrow streets of the park.

Some have rose bushes guarded by chipped garden gnomes, others are adorned with fairy lights or a discarded mattress.

For those who live here — contractors, shift workers, divorcees, pensioners and ex-cons — it’s often the same story.

They rolled in for a short stay only to put down roots for years, even decades.

For some, a patchy rental history or precarious employment arrangement made it difficult to secure a lease elsewhere.

In Australia’s priciest property market, this place is somewhere people can still afford to call home.

Most days, Andrew wakes up at 4:00am in the caravan he’s been living in alone for the past seven years.

A pair of big, friendly eyes flash behind thick glasses, hinting at the strapping young soccer player and successful businessman he once was.

Andrew, a 68-year-old pensioner, moved to the caravan park in 2013 when life tripped him up.

“It’s got good things, it’s got bad things. There’s a lot of inquisitive people in your business when you’re doing something.”

Andrew remembers his old life, jet-setting around Europe.

“I spent $40,000 in nine weeks with my first wife travelling around Europe, visiting Greece and Cyprus,” he says.

“That 1982 trip was the best time of my life. Full stop.”

When his wife of 25 years left him, Andrew left their paid-off house to her and their boys, who are now grown up, and bought himself a unit.

He fell in love again with a woman called Suzy he met at a football game.

Then the global financial crisis hit in 2008 and his lucrative scrap metal business collapsed, forcing him to sell his unit at a loss.

Two years later, Suzy died of breast cancer.

In all the pain, there was one mercy — they had a son, Benjamin, who’s now 11 years old and living with Suzy’s sisters.

“I’m going to live in a granny flat with my boy Ben. That’s my dream, just got to be patient, that’s all. That’ll give me another 10 years to my life.

Andrew works a few days a week to subsidise his pension by hunting for scrap metal, sending the extra money to his son.

He jumps into a ute that looks like a chicken coop on wheels, weaving through a grey warehouse complex until he arrives at a treasure trove: 20 broken washing machines.

He’s struck a deal with an old client to clear out the machines and mountains of cardboard.

He counts down from three before heaving one of the machines up into the tray, letting out a grunt as it drops.

It’s backbreaking labour for a young person, let alone someone pushing 70. If he can do a few truckloads of scrap, it’s a good day’s work.

Andrew pulls up a crate to take a breather. “I’m old, I’m old, gotta get up,” he says to himself.

Without the extra cash, Andrew would have only $6,800 for the year after his rent and power bill.

“I don’t think anyone can live on $300 a fortnight, especially if you’ve got a vehicle and petrol and stuff like that, other bills that come with it.”

For now, the caravan park is what’s keeping his dream alive, but Andrew has started to suspect something is at play.

The park was once pristine, he says, but lately he thinks it’s looking more “run down” and the owner might be about to sell.

On a Saturday night, the sound of crickets and the gentle patter of rain on aluminium roofs fills the evening air.

It’s so quiet you would hardly know 120 people lived here.

Fairfield West’s manager, Andrew Drury, keeps watch over the 98 caravans on an extensive CCTV system with nine rotating cameras.

A former Christian youth pastor who’s known to his friends as “Mr Pernickety”, he’s been watching the residents 10 hours a day for four years.

He says it helps him keep the peace in the park. For Andrew, a boring park is a “beautiful” park.

“I’ve got CCTV screens set up in basically every room in my cottage at home,” he says.

There’s one he can watch from the shower and another that reflects back in his bathroom mirror for when he’s brushing his teeth.

‘When we look at the screen and nothing’s happening, it looks so boring – we think it’s beautiful,’ says Andrew Drury.

“Oh, there goes cabin 25,” he says, pointing to a figure walking in the dark.

“Body shapes … at night time you can’t see their face properly but you can work out by the way they’re walking. I know all 120 people just based on that.”

Andrew is in charge of another screening process too: making sure prospective residents can afford to pay rent.

He’s the one residents come to with complaints about the park supposedly falling into disrepair, or management decisions they’re not happy with.

One sore point of late has been the decision to remove the light in the laundry to discourage washing machines being used in the middle of the night.

“They could live somewhere that’s technically nicer or bigger but they still choose to live here,” he says.

Finding a home in the park is still easier than the Sydney rental market, he says, plus the vans come with a bed, toaster, fridge and shower, all within 40 minutes of the Sydney CBD.

Now and then, he offers a reality check for the residents, warning the 15 per cent who own their van that pouring money into renovations is risky.

The park’s owner is an investor from the eastern suburbs and Andrew often warns the residents that if the boss is ever “thrown a big bucket of money”, he will sell.

“You could, and you would, basically be told to go within a year.”

The park’s owner, George Aroney, rejects suggestions the park is being deliberately run down and says he has made improvements since he bought it in 2009.

It’s a Sunday morning and a gentle light is streaming into Jen’s caravan.

She’s sitting at the kitchen table with her six-year-old son Marvin, who’s drawing a picture.

“What’s Godzilla doing?” Jen asks, gesturing at the monster taking shape on the paper.

“He’s trying to break into the building,” says Marvin, scribbling even harder. “This is Godzilla destroying the town because he doesn’t like towns.”

Over by the sink, the tea towels are neatly folded, and the drawings on the fridge are all perfectly spaced.

Jen has come a long way from the chaos of her younger years.

In 2019, after being evicted from her St Marys home for falling behind on rent, Jen thought she’d hit rock bottom.

Then a work colleague told her about a hidden caravan park with affordable prices.

“It was meant to be temporary, you know, it’s the slum,” she says.

Marvin still remembers the two-storey townhouse his family once called home, with a trampoline in the backyard, a cubby house and a big bedroom.

Jen worries he’ll miss out on a normal childhood; that parents don’t want to send their child to a sleepover in a caravan park.

“He talks about it now and again and it makes me cry,” says Jen, tearily.

“He says ‘Mum, can we go back there? Can we go back?’ So I say, kind of like, we’ll see in the future.”

Jen starts work at 6:00am, six days a week, working as a forklift driver in a warehouse an hour from the park. Her single income is enough to cover the $380 weekly rent.

She knows they could probably get a better place nearby for that rent but with the improvements and home comforts they have added to the van, they are happy to stay for now.

Her partner Anthony is a stay-at-home dad who hasn’t worked in six years since retiring early with health problems, but Jen takes pride in being the provider.

A decade ago, when she was in her thirties, Jen was a heroin addict and served a jail term for armed robberies she committed to support her habit.

“You just lose your self-respect, your morals, everything, this is like a million dollar arm, that is sad to say.”

Jen remembers the moment the police handcuffs went on, how it felt like a “goddamn relief” from the destructive cycle of drug taking and crime.

“I think going into custody was the best thing that’s ever happened to me, the best thing, you know,” she says.

“People might say it’s the worst place to be, but when you’re in a worse place inside your own head, it’s the best place to be … to change your life, makes amends for what you’ve done and take responsibility.”

It was in jail that Jen got her training as a forklift operator, her ticket to a new life on the outside. The caravan park has been an oasis of stability for the past few years.

“If they did take [the park] away it would be pretty sad,” she says.

The Fairfield West caravan park was listed on the market for more than three years up until January, with an asking price of $14.5 million in 2016.

But the park’s owner says it only looked like it was for sale for 1,200 days because of a deal he made with a property agent that took a while to get out of.

“In the end, we realised that he didn’t have the money,” says George. “So we didn’t bother about it and we haven’t bothered with anyone else.”

The park makes more than a million dollars a year but, like any investor, George would sell at the right price.

“If someone is going to offer you stupid money, you consider it,” he says.

Cheryl has heard the rumours about men in suits pacing the caravan park carrying folders, talking about putting up flats — she just hopes she’s gone by then.

“After I leave the caravan park I’m telling nobody where I’m going. I’m going to change my name, everything.”

Driving to the rental property viewing in Guildford, Cheryl starts to open up about the painful events that drove her to seek refuge.

After years of isolation from friends and family, she found herself trapped in an abusive relationship.

“He raped me every day when I didn’t do what I was told to do, he burned me with cigarettes until I would scream and no-one would come running,” she says.

“I’ve still got the scars.”

During one horrific incident, when he put Cheryl’s head through glass, she spoke to a doctor at the hospital and realised she had to get out.

She says by the time she had found the caravan park and the police started investigating the assault, the man she was running from had taken his own life.

She’s never quite shaken the fear of it.

Cheryl wipes away the tears, quickly composing herself as she steps out of the car, lining up behind migrant families and young couples outside the rental.

She’s picky and meticulous, inspecting every little detail, even though the rent is similar to what she pays for the caravan.

She takes issue with a rusty and unusable clothesline.

“The clothesline is not at my standards,” she says. “Clothesline, no, needs a lot of work.”

She hesitates but still takes an application form, “you never know”, she says, unfazed by past rejections.

Back in her dim caravan, Cheryl spreads out another batch of property listings on the coffee table, eyeing a place in North Parramatta under the technicolour flicker.

“My dream is to get a place for me and my cats and my plants and live happily ever after until I die.”

Andrew’s life in the park is precarious but he knows he has to keep going, especially for his son.

“Unless you live the highs and lows, you don’t know anything about life. Every day in your life, you learn something.”

Jen’s on her day off, spending time with Marvin and ensuring the caravan is a place where family memories can be made.

“People may think like, ‘this is what you have got to show?’ … this is maybe, you know, nothing. But to me it’s everything.”