"She would just ignore it (the disability)
"I had a few ups and downs with her ... she would say I was better off dead so I left home when I was a little fella, after I left school.
"At the start it was pretty hard, I didn't know where to go ... I hit the 'smoke' and the bottle."
He still smokes cigarettes but doesn't touch 'dak', or alcohol, he says.
"My Dad was a cool number but I haven't seen my mum much since ... every time I did she would try and put me inside."
His father, who drove trucks, died earlier this year, he says.
He has three sisters, one of whom lives in Rotorua, and two brothers, who live in Auckland.
He hopes one of the brothers will be able to help him get a job in the trucking industry but sees very little of any of his siblings.
"I'm a loner ... I've been like this since I was a teenager, even at school I liked my own company."
He spent time at Epuni Boys Home as a teenager, and six years ago did a short lag in Mt Eden for outstanding warrants, after being convicted of burglary and car conversion.
He has worked odd jobs - mowing lawns, gardening, delivering papers - but can't remember the last time he slept in a bed with clean sheets on an inner sprung mattress.
"I'd probably sleep on the floor if I was shown a bed now."
Meanwhile, providing a permanent night shelter in Rotorua has again gathered momentum.
Rotorua Night Shelter Trust chairman Reverend Alex Czerwonka said earlier this week the group had found temporary accommodation, manned by volunteers, for up to 30 homeless people in the city.
When he lived in Wellington, Jumbo would occasionally use the night shelter.
He supported any plan to provide a similar service in Rotorua.
"If they did get a shelter here it has to have strict rules - no drugs or booze, and people should be able to stay for up to a week."
Jumbo estimates there are around 23 'outsiders' - some as young as 12-years-old - sleeping rough in Rotorua.
"They only hit the streets because their Mum or Dad are pissing it up, or hooning it up against the wall at home and take it out on their kids."
It was sometimes safer on the streets for these vulnerable children than in their own home, he says.
He sleeps rough anywhere it is warm and dry - wrapped in a couple of layers of clothes and a sleeping bag in a 'crashpad' somewhere near the Government Gardens - his personal belongings stashed up a tree for safekeeping.
"The 'outsiders' don't steal from each other, we have some respect."
In winter he "hardens up" against the cold with more layers of clothes.
His normal day consists of waking up before sunrise - "when the birds start singing" - then it's onto an early opening cafe for a coffee.
A few hours later, after washing at the bus terminal, he beats a path to the warmth of the public library - distinguished by his trademark yellow Bob Marley cap - to scan through truck and hot rod magazines.
He enters pool or darts tournaments when he can but rarely follows sport or other pastimes. "I'm sociable but I've got no mates, I don't get into drinking, or getting stoned with others."
Jumbo says he doesn't go looking for trouble: "I like to sort out my own issues with the person concerned."
The rest of his day is spent "just like all the rest".
Each week he collects a $181 sickness benefit. "I never think of yesterday, or tomorrow, or next week, only today ... there's no use in getting worried about things that have happened, or are going to happen."
He says he is beginning to tire of street life after more than three decades. "I'm getting too old for the street ... most of my entire life has been living rough ... I'm sick of street life, there's nothing in it.
"I can't get a job, but if I could get one tomorrow and find a small flat with a lady who understood me I would change. I wouldn't like to bring up my kids in the way I have been."
