Australian Catholic Youth Festival 2019: Perth

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A couple weeks back our Youth Group and Young Adults Group (with me) traveled to Perth, a city on the west coast of Australia for the Australian Catholic Youth Festival 2019 (ACYF). We had to board a plane around 9:30 am and so left Kellyville at around 6 am from our metro stop (1). Thankfully, the new stop is just a two minute drive away from my friary.

Sydney is on the East Coast of Australia. From here, the flight to Perth is about 5 1/2 hours there, 4 1/2 back (because of a headwind). Above are some shots of the downtown area where the convention center was. Interesting architecture and beautiful sculptures. Perth sits right on the Indian Ocean, so this was my first time to see that body of water! The city sits right on the edge of the very beautiful and clear blue water (2-7).

These beautiful kangaroo sculptures (8-10) sat just outside the "Government House" (11). You could climb the "Bell Tower" (12-13) that perched just on the water; I love the way it looked like a sailing ship. And this beautiful sculpture (14) represents Pentecost and stood outisde the old Anglican cathedral (more on that below). Perth was founded in 1829 and named after Perth, Scotland, according to the internet.

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Here are night pictures of the Anglican Cathedral mentioned above at night (1-3). Perth seemed all ready for Christmas. This church was no exception, projecting winter scenes on its facade. The last shot (3), of falling snow, cracked me up as Aussie Christmas happens in the middle of summer! (Our temperatures for the week were in the 80s 90s and 100s!) Here I am again with the life-sized, kangaroo bronzes (4-5); I’m pretending to be a Joey in the pouch here in 5.

Here are some more photos of the group (we had a total of 15 go) and our night-life experiences of Perth (6-10). The ACYF talks/presentations went on for most of the day until 8.30 at night, each of the three days. And then after it all wrapped up for the day, we had to go out and look for dinner somewhere in town, usually a late-night, fast food restaurant or diner.

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Above are some pictures of the Immaculate Conception Catholic Cathedral of Perth opened in 1865. As you can see, they did a nice job of expanding the seating, letting in some natural light, without destroying the architectural beauty of the original structure. Too many churches here in Australia are just atrocious. The worst of modern liturgical architecture in my opinion! But I thought this was really nice.

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Sculptures everywhere like these photos of oversized objects (1-2) or a bike painted yellow (3). A tiny stream wove beside a walking path through a part of town (4-8). Throughout, parts of it would break off (as in 7-8) or bubble up in a fountain. It was very calming as the running shallow water made ownderful sounds.

I thought these bridges were amazing (9-13) and (14-17). They both were very sculptural and kept changing as you walked across them. Fun!

This last image is of our group with our bishop, Bishop Vincent Long (a Conventual like me, of our diocese: Parramatta) at the base of the Bell Tower on the last day of ACYF (18). Can you spot him? Me?

Following the ACYF, we spent our last day getting up very early to visit Rottnest Island (and an endangered marsupial called "quokkas")…but that will be next week's blog!