Community
19 February, 2025
Recognition for Mount Isa's self-proclaimed 'hobo'
The eccentric character tells the story that led to him receiving a Spirit of Mount Isa award.
Lee Ellis has come to expect a mixed reaction when he calls himself the “professional hobo of Mount Isa”.
He says some will shrug off his preferred moniker as the spirited musings of a genuine North West eccentric.
Others become concerned and go to great lengths to explain that Lee should not put himself down.
He says no one ever thinks that he might have evidence to prove his point.
When North West Weekly caught up with Lee, he was exiting a print shop along Marian Street, having just dropped off a small pile of his prized possessions to be laminated.
He said he had been thinking of writing down the adventures of his life and so those keepsakes were important to jogging his memory.
Among the mementoes destined to be wrapped in a protective coat were some footy photos of his adult son in Winton, his recent “Spirit of Mount Isa” Australia Day Award and a five-year drivers licence that expired in 2015.
“No one believes me when I tell them about my drivers licence,” Lee explains with a wry smile.
“Even when the police pulled me over, they would all want to have a look and show each other.
“But it proves what I say when I call myself the professional hobo of Mount Isa.”
The front of the card is just a run-of-the-mill maroon and yellow tinted HR license issued by the Department of Transport and Main Roads (TMR), complete with full name, date of birth and a small photo of the driver staring back with a blank expression.
But turn the card over and the top corner states a pretty unique address:
BRIDGE
GRACE STREET
MOUNT ISA 4825
Anyone’s first reaction is to think this is surely a mistake, a fake or a forgery.
Is this legal? How could your licence say you live at a bridge?
“I was homeless for a while in Mount Isa,” Lee clarifies.
“My licence was about to expire and I was still working. I went into TMR and asked them to help me fill out the forms to renew my licence.
“They tried to tell me I couldn’t get a licence without an address and so I thought ‘what about the Grace Street Bridge?’
“I spent so much time down there cleaning up the rubbish, so it was as good as my home anyway.”
Sure enough, the woman behind the counter was willing to punch in ‘Bridge, Grace Street’ to see whether it would suffice in the TMR computer system.
And Lee walked out of the building with an official government document claiming he lived under a bridge, which was his legal ID for half of the next decade.
While Lee has had sporadic periods of tenuous housing – he still lives in an unpowered shed – it should be clarified that he has never actually camped under the bridge.
But when Lee takes you to the Grace Street overpass, you soon notice it’s like a second home to him. Walking along the embankment and under the bridge structure, Lee recalls his latest three-month effort to leave the area spotless.
“I am glad to see it is still in good condition today,” he said.
The 74-year-old former opal miner arrived in Mount Isa almost three decades ago via the Greyhound bus.
He only planned to stay in the city for a few days. He was en route to the Pilbara, where he was planning to look for work as a machinery operator.
One afternoon, he was drinking at the pub when someone started complaining about the state of the Leichhardt riverbed.
Having been involved in the progress association in the tiny opal mining community of Yowah, near Thargomindah, where he had lived in a humpy and spent up to 15 hours a day digging shafts with a shovel and pick axe, Lee said he was used to taking action to fix things up.
He decided to wander down to the Leichhardt River and see the situation for himself.
“I just thought that a lot of people are complaining about the rubbish along the riverbed, but no one was doing anything,” he recalled.
“I believe that nothing is impossible and I could do something about it.”
It began decades of dedicated community service where he has filled an untold number of skip bins across an untold number of volunteer hours in an attempt to improve the riverbed.
At around the year 2000, he says he blocked off access to the old Isa Street crossing with mountains of rubbish in protest to the council’s refusal to provide enough empty skip bins.
In recent years, he added collecting recyclable cans to his schedule and can often be seen in the earliest hours of the morning rummaging through the public bins and back alleys of the city.
He gives away bags filled with these cans to those he deems less fortunate than himself so they can collect the money from the recycling facility along Duchess Road.
Like many great eccentrics, the zealous and stubborn commitment to an obscure cause is not always recognised for many years.
However, last month Lee was announced among the Spirit of Mount Isa award recipients.
He wasn’t at the official Civic Centre ceremony but collected his certificate from Mayor Peta MacRae a few days later.
“I was planning to stop cleaning up the riverbed, but that award really put some life back into me,” he said.
“Not bad for a Mount Isa hobo.”
