Homeless since returning to Australia seven months ago, Dr Selene Routley is a physicist and space scientist who makes a small income writing articles for science magazines. She currently sleeps in a van packed to the brim with her possessions.
"She earns a sporadic income of about $800 a month writing articles for science journals and doing freelance design work, but is unable to produce enough regular income to apply for rental accommodation."
Yeah, it's not like she's underpaid for her doctorate, she isn't really using her doctorate.
She needs some sort of University position, but it sounds like with her health conditions she wouldn't be able to maintain that either.
She wouldn't get a uni position here anyway. There's too few positions and you have to get one straight out of the gate unless you're transferring from some other academic position. She is shut out by her age. We don't value PHDs in Australia. When I worked in Germany my company had PHD students getting full time wages with the company paying for their education (Electrical Engineering PHDs doing chip design). Nothing like that exists in Australia, which is why I went into industry after a failed start at academia.