THE signs of poverty are immediate and in your face.

The first car we pass on our way into these forgotten towns has had its petrol cap pried off by someone attempting to siphon fuel. It is the first of several vehicles we’ll see today that have received the treatment.

“They run out of petrol in their own cars so Commodores are the easiest ones to walk past and just go pop,” explains Damien, 19, from the nearby public housing estate.

“It’s something someone should have pulled over and seen, but as I said before you turn a blind eye to that stuff you get left alone, they get left alone, you don’t cop no damage to your car,” he says.

If it sounds like we’re in the remote outreaches of the Australian outback you’re way off. San Remo, Wyong and Delmar are suburbs less than ninety minutes north of Sydney on the NSW Central Coast. We’ve journeyed here precisely because of these suburb’s proximity to Sydney, where some of the richest people in the country reside.

Within moments of exiting our car my photographer, while scrolling through photos on his viewfinder, is threatened by a man “Watch out with that camera or I’ll put it somewhere you won’t like,” he says. The man is with a child, who can be no older than eight, and they take off running up the street.

“Everyone’s a crack head. It’s just f**ken ice. Everyone is on ice,” explains Blackie, 48, a nearby resident in San Remo.

A perfect storm of unemployment, low incomes and little to no opportunity has resulted in the proliferation of methamphetamine (ice) addicts and dealers in the area, he says. Of the four children he has fathered, he says, two have become ice addicts.

“All these young kids, they’re all f**ked. Their parents are blowing their money on drugs, they gotta hit neighbourhood centres up for money and s**t, they’re bludging off everyone, it’s just a vicious cycle. They’ll get their one week (welfare cheque) and blow it on drugs and harass every bastard for that week and bludge money, and the kids go to school with nothing. They look like f**ken scabs. It’s terrible,” he says.

Violence and crime is a natural consequence.

“The coppers have been up this street, f**ken, three or four times in the last couple days,” he says, pointing out the houses where they’ve been.

“There were like 20 coppers over here the other day. Some bloke doing road rage, apparently he had warrants and s**t like that. Up the street some bloke, up the top here, he’s done something wrong and they’ve taken him away in cuffs. This is all in the one day, before lunch,” he laughs.

One of the more surreal aspects of these suburbs are their proximity to the mansions lining the Central Coast, in suburbs like Avoca, Killcare and Terrigal. There you’ll find some of the richest people in the country on weekend escapes in their holiday homes.

Teneal can only dream of stable housing. The 21-year-old former ice-addict is outside the Salvation Army’s Oasis youth centre in Wyong, just south of San Remo, when we find her.

She blames high unemployment and a lack of opportunities for most of the area’s problems.

“I’ve wanted to find work my whole life. Finding work is the hardest. There’s nothing really around here,” she says, adding, “When it comes to activities and events for youth there are none, and they wonder why our youth are turning out so bad.

“If they gave them something to actually do with their lives they wouldn’t be so horrible. There wouldn’t be as many of us on the streets as there is. We’ve just been shown no better,” she says.

Teneal dreamt of becoming a midwife, but an assault conviction she received ended that. Now she has her sights set on becoming a veterinarian, if only she could see a way out of her current situation.

“I would do anything to get out of here. I would also give anything to see this place change as well. There are so many kids with so much potential that don’t do nothing with it,” she says.

Fifty meters down the road we see signs of change. The Wyong Arts House opened this May delivering a welcome dose of culture and community to the area. Sellout shows by local comedians such as Anh Do are proof there is a hunger for entertainment and civility in these parts, says the marketing and box office manager, Emily.

“We’ve been really surprised at how well we’ve been received by a low socio-economic area where you might have seen money spent on other services than a theatre,” she says.

“We’ve been really welcomed here and the people are really owning it. I think it’s really a cultural change,” she says.

Another local doing her best to support young people in the area is ‘Nan’ (aka Sharon), 56, whose housing commission flat in nearby Delmar has become a refuge of sorts for up to ten youths between the ages 17 and their late 20s. She is quick to tell me none of them stay overnight. Only her partner does, who suffers from dementia and for whom she is the primary carer.

“They’re all just in a complicated situation in their household with their families so they come here,” she says. Nan also blames the of lack of employment opportunities for the area’s problems.

“Work is the hardest. It’s so hard to get a job around here,” she says.

“There’s nothing here for them to do and I think that’s what the main problem is … They get frustrated, they feel unworthy, they feel unwanted, they feel judged,” she says.

This flows into all manner of social ills, she says.

“There’s a lot of people on ice … violence all around, yelling, screaming, smashing things, doing burnouts,” she says.

During the interview Nan leaves to fetch me a glass of water. It’s full of solid white flecks and I’m reluctant to drink it. She becomes embarrassed and apologetic at this, but it’s not her fault, I tell her.

Nan tells me her dream is for “everyone to be happy, and just get on, and compromise, work together.”

“That’s what you need. You gotta work together otherwise you’re not gonna accomplish anything in life. You’re just gonna be in your rut and you won’t move forward,” she says.

Of the regulars at Nan’s house, only Matt, 20, has managed to find work. But even then he is required to travel two-hours each-way to Sydney where he works long hot days as a roofer. Such commutes are common up here; even among those considered ‘well-off’ — people who have bought their homes but are still have hundreds of thousand of dollars in debt. The experience of working in Sydney has given Matt an insight into how the other half live.

“They’ve got more money than they know what to do with,” he says.

“You go past houses, and to start with it’s a two million dollar house because of the location looking at the back of the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. In the driveway you’ve got a Lexus or an Audi four wheel drive … it’s just unbelievable,” he says.

He has no idea how they got so much money. Most of his friends are unable to find work and forced to exist on a between $260 and $350 in welfare benefits.

“Just their luck. They just listened in school maybe. I don’t know what the secret is … I work everyday and I’ve still got f**k all,” he says.

Our final stop is Hubert’s, a rustic underground cocktail bar in the heart of Sydney’s CBD. This is where Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull brought his staffers to drown their sorrows in $20 Martinis following this year’s hung parliament.

A scan of the menu reveals beers for $11 each, as well as 1500ml of Normandy Cider going for $140 or the same amount of Cidrerie Du Vulcain Swiss Pear Cider for $120.

It’s here where we meet Roscoe, 43, who is elusive about his line of work, describing it only as “commercial.” He estimates the average income of people in the bar to be between $150k and $250k a year.

Others we speak to say roughly the same and point to outliers in the banking and finance industry who can pull in anywhere between one and ten million annually. Roscoe, who is from the North Shore suburb of Cremorne in Sydney, catches a 30 to 40 minute ferry across the picturesque harbour to work each morning. He describes his lifestyle as “exceptional.”

“I am very lucky to have a decent amount of disposable capital so I can enjoy this great city,” he says.

GALLERY