It is a bitterly cold night at the end of June, and Margaret and Paul Mcgrath are doling out bread and pastries from trays lined up in the cleared-out garage space of their Ngunnawal home.
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Some nights the Mcgraths see up to 50 people queuing down the driveway, waiting for fresh food, but tonight it is quieter than usual.
Only a few people dawdle on the street, before being ushered up to see the selection of bread and fresh produce.
"What's probably unique about this is there's no judgment, nobody has to explain their need, justify their need," Margaret says, standing in the narrow drive as people squeeze past.
Occasionally Paul pulls goods from two fridges at the back of the space handing out lots of milk, cheese, margarine or meat.
"For people doing it tough," Margaret explains.
What, from the street, looks like a suburban Christmas market, is one of a handful of so-called street pantries which have sprung up in the area.
Margaret and Paul have been doing this for three years, ever since they moved into their home and placed a tub of free items out the front.
Now it is a nightly ritual, and they are planning to redo their front yard to accommodate the mounds of donated goods, stacked up in ordered chaos about the place.
Julie Archer, who comes by every now and again to fill up on what she needs, says the free offering helps her shopping trolley go further.
"Especially when you're a single income earner, and you've got a mortgage, and you've got to pay all the bills and your groceries and everything."
"So yeah, it definitely does help, especially now with the interest rate rises as well."
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Three months ago the cost of fuel rocketed over $2 per litre, and Australia's inflation rate hit 5.1 per cent for the first time in 20 years.
During the election campaign, Paul watched politicians and the media sling about the term "cost of living", as he helped people buckling under the pressure fill their plates.
"My biggest concern is: This has been going on for at least three years - the price of housing in Canberra has been ridiculous for a long time."
"So there's all this talk during the election - 'Petrol prices are high, cost of living' - what worried me, is that as soon as petrol prices came down, the government and the media would go, 'Oh, this is all over'."
"This is the thing that's tipped it over the edge, but it could be anything."
There are more than 40,000 people in Canberra living in poverty, many of them working but still poor: earning incomes as low as $450 per week.
But the people who need help aren't hidden statistics, they're the people in this neighbourhood, and on streets like this all over Canberra.
"Fuel has gone up, rates have gone up, rents have gone up, everyone's struggling," Pam Zielke says.
"It's your everyday people who are struggling ... not even your low income, it's your medium-income earners I'm noticing now."
From her yard on a nearby street she offers pretty much everything and anything for free.
There is so much need, she says, speaking over the phone as she waits in the car to pick up her grandchildren from school.
I don't know what's going on with the world at the moment, but we've just got a lot of people in need.
- Pam Zielke
What she's seeing play out in her own community has her worried for their futures.
"I don't know what's going on with the world at the moment, but we've just got a lot of people in need."
"I worry about my granddaughters, I'd just hate to see where they're going to be when they grow up, trying to get food on the table, getting jobs and everything."
There are sombre moments, like these, knitted into what Pam does. She recently helped a family who had to surrender their dogs when they couldn't afford to feed them any longer.
"They said they had to think of their children first, and that broke my heart because I have three rescue cats and two dogs as well."
The organisers of the pantries are brimming with stories like these, tragedies, but also moments that stir them.
Paul recalls helping one man, who turned up looking for cookbooks to make the money go further, and ended up leaving with arms laden full of food and supplies.
"He says, 'I'm the stupidest male out there, we've been struggling for a while and I didn't ask for any help. I should have asked for help'."
"And I just walked across the driveway and said, 'Paul Mcgrath, equally stupid male'."
These grassroots pantries are helping to fill the gaps people in Canberra are known to slip through.
Sometimes they are too proud to turn to a charity, or they don't realise they need help, the organisers say. Others are there just to reduce waste, or to find some social connection.
Most often the people who visit these pantries are the ones who put back into them with volunteering efforts or donations.
Jess Fordyce, a waste and resource recovery officer at the Canberra Region Joint Organisation has been working with charities and street pantries alike to connect them with food.
"A lot of the time, those agencies, they don't really have much capacity ... to go out and to get additional food for their clients," she says.
Even larger agencies might not be able to source a volunteer or a van to pick up food from supermarkets who are otherwise willing to donate.
"The cost of living in Canberra and the housing crisis, people are just falling through the gaps if they're on a low income," Jess says.
"And so all the agencies I've spoken to, all of them are just super, super tight with their demand at the moment."
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