From sleeping bag to GM and back again: Joshua’s inspirational journey from the street to the Vinnies CEO Sleepout
A prominent figure in the South Australian community shares his personal experience of homelessness ahead of the 2026 fundraising event.
Speaking with Joshua Clarke today, most people would never imagine that, once upon a time, he was sleeping rough.
As the general manager of EASYFLOWERS and a prominent figure in the South Australian community, Clarke carries all the trappings of a successful executive.
He serves as president of the Gifted and Talented Children’s Association of SA, is a board member of the Australian AI Olympiad, and a former chairman of the Board at Dara School.
But behind the professional success is a complex journey that drives him to help others, rooted in an experience that changed his life path.
During his formative teenage years, Clarke was the picture of a successful teenager. He was educated, athletic and well known in his home town. He was so successful, in fact, that he eventually represented Australia in indoor soccer and was within reach of the AFL draft.
Then the family dynamic began to fracture.
“What led to me being truly homeless was my parents’ separation,” Clarke recalls. “It was a difficult and confronting period that changed the course of everything in my life.”
As the oldest of three boys, Clarke had already taken on responsibilities such as getting up at 6am and ensuring his younger brothers were ready for school each morning. Following the separation, this evolved into a more defined parental role, providing them with stability and support.
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However, as he showed support towards his mother, he became increasingly alienated from his father.
Trying to navigate a breaking home, it was, in the end, his attempts to show kindness and compassion to both that left him caught in the middle.
Battling to act as a support for both parents, he ended up on the wrong side of both, until one day he reached a devastating conclusion: “In the end, no one wanted me.”
With nowhere else to go, Clarke quietly packed his backpack and his sleeping bag one afternoon and headed for the nearest township.
The sleeping bag and the school shower
For the next year and a half, Clarke lived a double life that few of his classmates or teammates could have guessed.
“I remember the first couple of weeks in particular,” he says. “I was sleeping rough in my sleeping bag and using the school showers to keep clean.”
Sleeping rough quickly transitioned to couch surfing, all while working near full-time hours, studying full time and maintaining his elite sporting commitments.
“It was a period of intense pressure that taught me a vital, often overlooked truth,” he says. “Homelessness is not always the person on the street corner who looks like they have had a hard life, or the family fleeing domestic violence. It is broad, complicated and frequently invisible.”
His survival during this scary period was anchored by an unconventional support network. He found mentorship in his partner and future wife, also through a supportive teacher and two older friends – Tommy, who was in his 40s, and Austin, who was over 80.
While other people failed him, his future wife, teacher, Tommy and Austin became his true north.
“People who have experienced it can understand this, but the journey to homelessness often doesn’t start with a big turn,” he says.
“In my experience, it only takes a one-degree change in direction to send you there. I was lucky to have people who helped steer me back. The longer you stay off course, the harder it is to return.”
The return to the sleeping bag (or cardboard)
On Thursday, June 18, Clarke will return to the sleeping bag for his fifth Vinnies SA CEO Sleepout at the Adelaide Zoo.
For him, the event is a bridge between two worlds. He acknowledges the irony of leaders who run major departments and businesses spending a night outside in the cold, but he insists the experience is powerful … and life-changing for many.
“We are very fortunate to be in positions where we run departments and businesses, but beyond that is a world we are not involved in,” he says.
“We sleep rough but it’s the stories through the night that are the most powerful thing.”
A leadership forged in crisis
While the experiences of his youth have left their mark, they have also become the blueprint for Clarke’s personal beliefs and leadership style today.
“My journey has made me vigilant about the wellbeing of those around me, and allowed me to spot and support friends and colleagues facing their own ‘one-degree’ shifts,” he says.
Having lost a close friend to suicide in his early 30s – someone who shared a similar early life journey and whom Clarke personally helped seek support through crisis care and into stable living – he knows those interventions can be the difference between life and death.
Today, that friend’s family member donates to Clarke’s Sleepout campaign every year in his memory.
Clarke’s act of remembrance is more hands-on; a combination of reaching hearts and minds while raising money along the way.
It’s about doing the right thing, making sure no one else has to suffer unnecessarily, and recognising those one-degree changes, gently guiding people back.
“Leaders should get involved because the CEO Sleepout is an opportunity to give back to a cause that’s bigger than us,” he says. “It’s a chance to change the course of people’s lives.
“If, by sleeping out, each of us can do that for just one person, then that’s enough.”
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