Frozen meals cooked by his partner are the only creature comforts that remind pensioner Jeff Craven of home while he lives in a Sydney hostel so he can get timely cancer treatment.
Mr Craven will be away from his Dunbogan home, 370 kilometres north of Sydney, for seven weeks to receive treatment for tongue and tonsil cancer.
He said the alternative was to wait six weeks while the Mid North Coast Cancer Institute in nearby Port Macquarie replaced one of its two linac accelerators, which is a radiation machine.
"It'd be so much easier to come home, lay on your own lounge, lay in your own bed, have your own bathroom, kitchen," Mr Craven said.