On Sunday (7 June 2026), I experienced my first ever AFL game with a group of friends at the SCG (Sydney Cricket Ground). Not that I really understood any of it, to be honest. But I will say that seeing it in real life is far superior to watching it all flattened out on a giant flatscreen TV.

As for the match itself, well, that was hardly the (ahem) introduction I was expecting. St Kilda trouncing Sydney Swans in the first quarter and it then taking the Swans the whole of the match up until the very end of the last quarter to finally get out in front on the leaderboard. Calling it tense would be an understatement. Not that I had any “skin” in the game, mind you. I have never followed any team or sporting code in my life, and I don’t think that’s going to change anytime soon.
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Also, the ferocious passion of multiple stands full of grieved Swans supporters making known their disagreement with referee decisions over player actions is not something I would ever want to be one the receiving end of.
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And then on Wednesday (10 June 2026), I got up at 4:00 AM to catch the train to Newcastle to photograph the sunrise around both the foreshore of the Hunter River and Nobbys Beach with my old DSLR.
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I’m amazed that I actually did it. The kernel of the idea for doing it got stuck in my head sometime last year and I would have preferred to have done it earlier in 2026 when we were still in the summer months here down under, but that was a stretch too far for me in that prior moment for varying reasons.

The main reason I had for taking my DSLR—apart from better dynamic range than a smartphone—was an intention to give it a ‘one last hurrah’ before parting ways with it. Something that I am still no closer to doing after taking it out with me on Wednesday, which my shooting wrist was haranguing me over continuously the following day with accompanying pains and twinges. Most of my focus that day ended up being funnelled into making most of the morning’s golden hour light and pushing myself to try and beat a bulk carrier on its way out to sea before it reached Nobbys Head, which of course I did not accomplish. I am not Superman. Nor was I set up for jogging and, believe me, those bulk carriers can move!

I think I haven’t exerted myself so much since WYD Lisbon, and after what I put myself through on Wednesday I could not in good conscience kid myself into thinking I could do a World Youth Day again. My spring doesn’t spring back like it did 3 years ago and I don’t think it likely that I’d have anyone with me to call me out pull me back from the brink of burning out.

WYD is a youngster’s game and I’m not that young anymore.

Or should that be: foolish anymore?

 
Vincent Cavanagh
14 June 2026

“Rakuran. Rakuran san-sei.”

​Portraits of some friends in the style of a known Japanese cartoon that I’m never likely to watch beyond random clips of it online.

Why did I do it? Because it was a goofy idea that sparked joy in me, and I wanted to make it happen.


Vincent Cavanagh
21 April 2026

A brief explainer on what is Holy Wins/Holywins can be found in this Catholic News Agency article here and, yes, the Bishop now has a live-in/pet(?) dinosaur called Hotspur.

And in other news—after having the thought of it gnawing at the back of my brain for what felt like half the year—I finally began preparing Month–pages for a 2026 Calendar on Sunday, 26 October 2025. Hooray!

Photographs for each month are currently still in the selection phase. Yes, photographs.

​This upcoming calendar will be a collection of images of the different places that I visited in 2025. And because of all the effort that I poured into trying to pull together Jubilee Year 2025 grassroots–young adult pilgrimages to the Shrines of Hope in my diocese left me both mentally, physically and emotionally drained, such that I have had no impetus to do anything artistic whatsoever for the majority of 2025.
Save for the painting of St Clare of Assisi back in July, of course. Which is why the comic at the top of this blog post, for me, is a significant win.

 
I will endeavour to keep you all informed about further 2026 Calendar developments when they are worthy of promulgation.


A happy and holy Hallowtide to you all folks!


Vincent Cavanagh
31 October 2025

Here are a few of the many photographs that I took on Sunday, 28 September 2025, when my father and I journeyed out west to Richmond for the 100 Years Airshow at the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) Base Richmond.

It was an good day out, apart from a lot of train connections to-and-fro from the Airshow and certain crowd management occurrences at the end of our visit. One can safely tick this item off the ol’ bucket list.

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Vincent Cavanagh
30 September 2025

Merry Christmas and a Happy Jubilee of Hope to you all for 2025!


Vincent  Cavanagh
25 Dec 2024

EILEEN ROSALINE O’CONNOR was an Australian Catholic nun and co-founder with Fr Ted McGrath of the Society of Our Lady’s Nurses for the Poor – more colloquially known as the Brown Nurses or just Our Lady’s Nurses – a religious order whose mission was to give free care and nursing to the poor, especially those who had fallen through the cracks of regular systems.

Eileen could not stand or walk for much of her life due to a severe curvature of her spine from having fallen out of her perambulator (pram) at a young age. The extent of her height was 3 feet 9 inches (115 centimetres) from which was given the affectionate nickname of The Little Mother.

She lived most of her life at Coogee, a suburb of Sydney, except for when God healed her enough to go to Rome to obtain approval of her fledgling religious order. Such was her determination, that the rigours of travel did not deter her.

Despite being bedridden most of the time, Eileen was the hub of the order. She co-ordinated much through telephone calls. At the end of the day, she welcomed the Nurses home, and received their confidences. Having been so chronically ill herself, she knew just how much kindness and tenderness were needed in caring for the ill and the elderly, and how important it was to maintain the dignity of anyone they ministered to.

She died at the age of 28 from chronic spinal tuberculosis and exhaustion.


On Friday 16 August 2024, Archbishop of Sydney Anthony Fisher OP officially signed off on the collated Australian documentation of Eileen O’Connor’s life for the Cause of Sainthood. And on Monday 14 October 2024, Archbishop Fisher formally presented the documentation in Rome to Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints.


For further information about the life and work of Eileen O’Connor and the story of the Sisters of Our Lady’s Nurse of the Poor, visit the website for the Cause of Eileen’s Canonization here.

And as a clarifier, this step of the Canonization process is seeking for her to be recognized and approved by the Vatican as a Blessed; the step before being named a Saint in the Catholic Church.


Vincent Cavanagh
16 October 2024

My father and I spent the day today travelling together along the recently opened City section of the Sydney Metro, stopping to look at the new-build architecture on our way out to visit the Australian Railway Historical Society’s Redfern bookshop. Just over a hundred metres from Waterloo Metro Station. In the Sydney suburb of Alexandria. Clear as mud ;p

Our first stop on the new section was Victoria Cross Metro Station which, as far as I am aware, has already been shorted to “VicX” in text message form by my peers.

From what I’d seen on various YouTube videos about Victoria Cross, I was expecting a station that could’ve easily been found on the Washington (DC) Metro in the United States. But from physically standing on the concourse above the platforms I was convinced that it more like something you would see in the J.J. Abrams Star Trek series of films. Either the inside of the Enterprise or an outer-space hangar waiting form that self-same starship to dock within it.

Next on the list was Gadigal (Pitt Street) Metro Station. As much as this station’s platforms have been designed to emulate London Underground’s Elizabeth Line to more than a passing degree, the horizontal ribbing on the curved platform and walkway walls destiny remind me of the interior of the starship Heart of Gold from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (specifically the 1981 TV series version), and half-expected Marvin (2005 Film costume) to plod down the corridor with his accompanying paranoia.

Taking the escalators up from platform level we looked upon the Park Street Exit mural of the two-mural ​‘The Underneath’ by Callum Morton. After a brief look through the ticket barriers out onto Park Street and the Criterion Hotel opposite, we descended back along the escalators to the platform to catch the next train to Waterloo Metro Station.

On the outside of the Waterloo station building a group of workers were tinkering over a recalcitrant water bubbler as we walked past them and I can report that, as of today, there no signs of either ABBA or outdoor lip-syncing to be found ;)

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Vincent Cavanagh
28 August 2024

I will endeavour in this personal, reflective piece not to repeat things that I have already written much about before.

​LISBON World Youth Day Week started on a Tuesday, 1 August 2023, which makes keeping track of events personally in one’s mind rather difficult. Later on, at times one could be forgiven for the honest mistake of losing, or even gaining, a day on your internal calendar.
   Opening the Week was the get-together, catch-up and sing-song of the Australia Gathering: an event more geared towards schoolies and schoolies-at-heart than for those seeking quiet, whilst I utterly failed to not be sunburnt a second time on pilgrimage. (Venice being the first.)
​   The whole week, and events, and talks, of World Youth Day (WYD) is a marathon and not a sprint; and I was burning more energy and mental capacity than I was recovering in what little moments of quiet recharging there were to begin with.
   WYD is not what one would call ‘introvert-friendly’ by any personal measure. Nor is it amenable to diabetics or children of diabetic parents—especially when there is no clear idea of when the day’s Mass was to actually start for a person to be able to figure out whether they were inside or outside of the one-hour fast before Mass and be able to act accordingly.
   Personally, it is very hard—almost impossible—to keep up with others when you are emotionally and physically exhausted before mid-day and your strongest, inmost desire is to just go somewhere far away from the thronging crowds and just huddle down in peace, quiet, and shade to recover.
   Missing breakfast on the second day because of such exhaustions the previous day is also not a recipe for congenial interactions with others, peer-to-peer or otherwise. Mea culpa.

​ALSO, it is suffocating to one’s already stressed psyche when self-autonomy is curtailed (e.g. “You can not under any circumstances go to events or places by yourself.”) when all you want to do is go straight back to the hotel and get out of the heat because you are already overloaded but your group has decided to look inside churches on the way, instead.
   Please be under no illusion, I do appreciate the need to keep people together for everyone’s personal safety and security (and insurance protocols…). But surely there must some better way to balance keeping track of everyone and an individual’s internal idea of safety being to get out of the crowds and temperatures that they are struggling amongst?
   Communication to normal (i.e., non-group leading) pilgrims was, at times, let down by conflicting or insufficient streams of information about what the day’s schedules were or what was, or was not, permitted by the Pilgrim Leadership, which left those pilgrims who do not always live their lives by the seat of their pants (far from it) at a disadvantage as to knowing what they needed to plan or prepare for ahead of time.
   Conscientious planners and World Youth Days do not mix well.

THE good of WYD Week was indoors and away from the hot sun on the Friday, Day 4, for the third Catechesis session with the Bishop of Dallas, Texas, Edward ‘Ed’ Burns speaking on the topic of Mercy, God’s loving mercy.
   From my experience of living this WYD, this was the mountain top—the church where this session was held is literally built on a hill—before going through Calvary, which for me was the whole weekend of the WYD Vigil.

STAKING out plots of turf in the Iberian sun at the WYD Vigil site for the rest of the Diocesan pilgrims with the Advance Team, was an opportunity offered to me. I accepted it, glad to have not placed myself in a position where I would’ve been far more likely to have blown my top at someone due to the overarching heat of the day, namely the long Pilgrim Walk from Lisbon centre to the Vigil site on the banks of the Tejo (Tagus) River.
   Prior to Pope Francis arriving and the Vigil starting, there were all sorts of talks, testimonies and musical interludes. The one that stuck in my craw most was everyone being asked questions by representatives of an International Youth body that was the ‘fruit of’ the 2018 Youth Synod, questions that were specifically prompting ‘Yes’ answers from listeners in a call and response method, without really giving anyone time to reflect upon the questions and give real, honest answers. Rigged “questionnaires” that have only one option are not honest nor something one should expect to see in the Catholic Church let alone WYD.
   Being hemmed in and surrounded, virtually on all sides, by all the other pilgrims around me at the Vigil site and the near constant music—which I wished to God would have stopped—gave me sensory overload which put my body into adrenaline-fueled survival-mode for the rest of the weekend. I only really started calming down internally when we were in Fátima on our post-WYD ‘retreat’. As it was, taking photographs was the only thing that I had any control over and so used that as a way of distracting myself from the discomforts that I had chosen (many months ago) to be in that night.
   Pope Francis’ motorcade entered the Vigil site at around 8:30 pm. Once on the Vigil stage the Pope listened to two testimonies: one from a local Portuguese priest and the other from a young woman from northern Mozambique who had survived an attack by Islamist insurgents on her village. (In all honesty I had forgotten that either of these testimonies had happened and only really recalled them when I was looking up online reports about the Vigil to jog my memory for this piece.)
   What little I do remember of Francis’ Vigil Address to the youth was the on-the-fly translation by the volunteer English interpreter over our group’s portable radio/speaker:

‘Joy is Missionary’
‘…become roots of Joy’
‘You don’t find joy closed up in a library’
‘…we have to find a key for it.’ — ‘Have you gotten tired? …when you feel like a wet sponge…?’ which got a round of laughs from the Pope’s imitation of a lethargic, wet sponge.
‘…when you see a friend fallen down, pick them up. Powerfully pick them up!’
​‘…the only time we look down on someone is when we are helping them up again!’​
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​AFTER the Address there was a drone light show displaying the 2023 WYD Theme “Rise Up” in multiple languages before we went into Adoration of Our Blessed Lord in the Eucharist.
   The assembled symphony and choir were a true highlight, giving it their all. Then came the blessed (in both ways) silence in the moment of pause during Adoration where one could’ve heard a pin drop echo throughout the whole Vigil site, across the river beside us, and beyond.
   The only upset to all of this was kneeling down on the aggregate that the site was built atop. What amount of grass that had been put down had been all but burnt by the Iberian sun over the course of the WYD Week leaving only the odd tuft of hardy grass root and a plethora of bits of rock ranging from golf ball to house brick-size. After all of the miles it had been flown and transported across Italy, the sleeping bag I had bought specifically for the Vigil ended up being used as little more than padding for both my knees and posterior. (As I write this, it still remains unopened from the day it was bought at the camping warehouse.)
   Following Pope Francis’ farewell to the crowd there was post-Adoration music from about 10:30 pm led by one Padre (Father) Duarte Rosado and his guitar. The music finished at 11:43 pm at which time we were then audibly water-boarded until 1:06 am(!) by an ecological propaganda film flying under the guise of Laudato Si’. Because it was in English there was no escape for any of us English-speakers who are already quite sick to death of this sort of emotional blackmailing that we have already experienced ad nauseam back home in our respective countries.
   I didn’t need more kindling for my already overworked emotional barometer. I wanted—wished for silence, for the blazing glare of a thousand suns of the Vigil site floodlights to be switched off (keeping only the necessary ones over the main thoroughfares between sectors turned on), for all of the music to stop, for sleep—to not be alone in a sea of people, even amongst those that I had walked through Italy with. It’s alienating to be stuck sitting on a still rolled-up sleeping bag inside of an almost 2-foot-square patch of ground surround by an array of bodies all packed in like a human game of Tetris, all of them appearing to be sleeping despite the adverse conditions.
   I tried sleeping, but I couldn’t. The mid-night air was so cold that it numbed me to my very bones. Admittedly it was nowhere near as freezing as I remember it having been in Randwick for Sydney WYD 2008—nothing compares to how cold a night that was.
   So I ended up walking back and forth from the sector our Diocese had been placed in (A5) to the banks of plywood toilet cubicles two sectors over for what felt like a dozen round trips throughout the rest of the night, in-between tip-toeing through sleeping pilgrims to get to the water station to refill my water bottle and trying not to turn into a human icicle whilst sitting huddled down on the ground.
   During the course of that night a veteran pilgrim gave me an un-used space blanket of theirs to keep warm under and we later ended up doing Night Prayer and reading the approaching morning’s Gospel Readings for the Mass whilst walking between our sector and the toilets.

   Pope Francis arrived soon after 8 am, greeting the crowds of pilgrims from the open-top Mercedes G-class Popemobile (no, I am not a petrol-head, I just like being thorough) before being whisked behind the stage to prepare for the World Youth Day Mass on the Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord Jesus. I did have to force myself through a barricade of WYD volunteers to get back into our sector from visiting the toilets the last time before Mass after the Portuguese police had told the organisers to lockdown the site for the Pope’s arrival. I was not alone in wanting to get out of the pathway and back into the sector. One of those organizational hiccups, I guess.
   What I mainly remember of the Mass is standing around in the rocky earth under the mid-morning to mid-day sun. If it hadn’t been for the heat and the previous night I might have laughed at the end of the Mass with how almost comical it was with the litany of “after-Mass announcements”, ranging from thank-yous to invitations to the 2025 Year of Jubilee in Rome and then—finally—what everyone (who wasn’t curial clergy) was waiting to hear: the announcement and reveal of Seoul as being the next host of WYD in 2027.
   And then came the cauldron of making and surviving our way in small, separate Diocesan pilgrim groups through the absolute crush of people to get out of the WYD Vigil site and head back to our hotel in Lisbon.
   Amongst the small group of pilgrims I was with, it was a non-stop trek through the local streets and boulevards to the (ahem) nearby Oriente Station and then forcing ourselves through the police-controlled scrum of people trying to get into the station itself to return to their own accommodations as well. I think that there was definitely a Grace of God upon us as we walked through those streets to the station without stopping but just continuing on and on, pushing away any form of exhaustion as we made towards our stated goal.

   Alighting from the Lisbon Metro we arrived at Marquês de Pombal Square—where we had gathered before to welcome Pope Francis to Lisbon and participated in the Stations of the Cross—and finally got both a foot and a seat inside the air-conditioned McDonald’s, where we had lunch and cooled down on soft-serve ice creams. What had once been a buzzing throng of international pilgrims outside was now a virtual ghost-town save for the workers continuing to take down the scaffolding for the Welcome Stage and all of the sightscreens dotted in and around Eduardo VII Park.
   Gathering ourselves, we made the short walk back to our hotel and to the awaiting welcoming committee of the Diocese before I took the elevator up to my room and crashed out cold on the bed—doing the one thing I later found out a person who has stayed up all night should never do—and then scrambling to catch-up with where all the other pilgrims from the Diocese were having dinner. As nice as it may be, never—and I mean NEVER—leave your phone on silent (or off) when people are trying to contact you with their plans, especially if they involve food.

​AND after all that happened in Lisbon—and maybe in spite of it—I still find that I want to go through it all over again.
I must be mad.
   Of course, I think we (pilgrims) might already be mad for doing it in the first place, but my main motivation for embarking on such a crazed endeavour as to do it all again would be to prove that I could do it. Do it right the second time. Knowing (at least roughly) what I would be facing rather than having everything coming at me like a boxer’s fist in an arena with all of the lights turned off. To prove that I could do it without all of the angst and baggage (both metaphorical and physical) that I took with me to Lisbon. That I wouldn’t be going in blind, as the saying goes, the second time around.

   You may well call foul and decry that as selfishness, for whatever part of it is selfishness, but I have had the same experience of not wanting to let a “bad” experience get the better of me when I had walked the Jerusalem Bay Trail from Cowan to Brooklyn (Hawkesbury River) the first time. I walked it a second time with another group (who knew what they were doing and where they were going) and I got through it with far fewer trials and tribulations than I had the first time around.
   I want to prove—if only to myself—that I can have a “good” WYD experience and not be left with thoughts such as “yes, I did it, but if I’d done this or that instead”, as I have been when going over my memories of Lisbon.

​THIS whole WYD journey started with me reading a notice in a parish bulletin about a parish group’s start of their own preparations, separate from the Diocese, to go on pilgrimage to Lisbon and hearing the words “Life changing” in a small voice.
   (Also, I’d had more than a fair share of accumulated pestering from well-meaning parishioners for the 12 years or so prior to Lisbon.)
   There was certainly a lot of stretching and pulling with WYD Lisbon and it has certainly changed the direction of my life in different ways, but I still feel no closer to a clearer answer as to whether it was “life changing” or not. It’s always clearer to see changes from someone else’s perspective than your own, eh?
   To paraphrase and expand upon what that veteran pilgrim told me on that Vigil night: you never come to World Youth Day for the actual day, that’s never the draw, you come to World Youth Day for the God-experiences, whether they be small and quiet or loud and unmistakable like a blowhorn. You don’t necessarily come for the destination, but you do come for the relationship with Him.

Pax,
Vincent Cavanagh
16 August 2024
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[edited for clarity and to add missing words - 16 September 2024]
[added more photographs plus minor formatting changes - 4 April 2026]

It has been a long while since I lasted did a picture for myself or “published” one on this website.
Hopefully this may be the end of the illustrative drought, pax.

PEACE:
Summer daisies,
Bubbles,
Snow-capped mountains,
Gliding swans,
and Bountiful clouds.

 
Vincent Cavanagh
27 July 2024

Vincent Cavanagh, 2024

A spotlight on Bishop Stumbers’ short-lived career in stand-up comedy.
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Congratulations to anyone who “gets” the cameo appearances on the far side table ;)
With apologies to Messrs Astley and Baker.


Vincent Cavanagh
30 Mar 2024 / Holy Saturday