Every week at the Peninsula Support Hub, a volunteer team runs five meal services, hands out food hampers and opens the doors to showers, laundry facilities and internet access for people who need them.
The Breakfast Club has been doing this work since 2017, starting from a small shopfront with limited space and limited reach. The move to the purpose-built hub, which opened in July 2025, changed the scale of what was possible. The first breakfast service at the new hub fed 35 guests. Attendance has since doubled.
Since opening, the club has served 4,646 meals, distributed 1,081 food hampers, provided 714 showers and completed 401 loads of laundry for people experiencing homelessness or financial hardship.
More than just a meal service
The numbers are striking, but the feedback from guests puts a different kind of weight on them.
“It means I don’t feel like a refugee. It makes me feel human,” one guest said. Another described a first shower after months without access: “After a couple of months without a shower, having a hot shower made me feel alive and refreshed.”
For Breakfast Club President Michelle Gilchrist, that response is exactly what the service is designed to produce. “It provides a space where the community can come together and care for others,” she says. “People know they are welcome, whether they need support or simply have something they want to share.”
The hub sits within a broader support ecosystem run by the Salvation Army, which manages the facility and connects guests with housing advice, financial counselling, legal assistance, mental health support and family programs. In the hub’s first six months, 996 people received support, with 380 seeking help with housing and 219 seeking financial assistance or advice.
The partnerships that keep it running
The Breakfast Club relies on community organisations to maintain and expand what it offers. Orange Sky Australia sends volunteers each week to provide laundry services and helped fund upgrades to the hub’s drying facilities, a practical detail that makes a significant difference for guests trying to maintain clean clothes without a home.
Community Bank Samford, through its community grants program, recently funded a new commercial fridge that doubled the club’s cold food storage. The same grant covered computers for guests needing internet access and printing, as well as equipment for the administrative team.
Mandy Bell, Senior Branch Manager at Community Bank Samford, described The Breakfast Club as “a community pillar for the past nine years.”
“Recently, funding from our community grants program enabled them to buy a new fridge, doubling food storage for daily meal services and food hampers, which are distributed twice weekly to those in need,” Bell said.
A hub that feels like a neighbourhood
The Peninsula Support Hub was built as more than a service delivery point, and in practice it works that way. On any given day the building fills with conversation, volunteers preparing meals and guests who return regularly enough to feel ownership over the space.
Many guests help out with small tasks around the hub, contributing to the atmosphere rather than simply receiving from it. That dynamic, where people experiencing hardship also contribute to the community around them, reflects what the Breakfast Club has always aimed for.
The Breakfast Club operates from the Peninsula Support Hub at Oxley Avenue, Redcliffe. Volunteers and donors are always welcome. To get in touch or find out how to support the service, visit their site or contact the Salvation Army Redcliffe on (07) 3883 3200.
Published 29-May-2026
