Here is a selection of the 35mm film photos — Kodak Gold 200 — that I took whilst on the farewell ‘V Set to Kiama - Christmas by the Sea’ journey from Sydney Central down to Kiama on December 14th, 2025. It was a joint event with the Sydney Bus Museum (Leichhardt) and Sydney Tramway Museum (Loftus) to mark the then coming end of NSW V Set electric trains running on the South Coast Line. Kiama being the limit of electrification on the South Coast. Enjoy!

Vincent Cavanagh
​3 March 2026

On Sunday my father and I rode on the heritage train service operated by NSW ‘S’ set S28 from North Sydney Station, crossing Sydney Harbour Bridge, to Loftus for the annual Vintage Tramway Festival at the Sydney Tramway Museum. The heritage service was organised by Transport Heritage NSW for ticketed passengers only. Below are a few of the photographs that I took on our day out to ride both light and heavy rails 😉

Vincent Cavanagh
27 February 2026

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.

​
Vincent Cavanagh
30 September 2025

Well, given that my 12 Months Later review of my social media exodus was read as more of a 2023 Review (which it was, to be fair) I might as well do another re-view for 2024 😅

2024 was kicked off by going out with some fellow World Youth Day pilgrims to the Westpac OpenAir Cinema on the Fleet Steps overlooking Farm Cove and the rest of Sydney Harbour. The film we’d arranged to see was One Life (2023), a biographical film about humanitarian Nicholas Winton and more broadly about the Kindertransport of Jewish children from German-occupied Czechoslovakia to Britain at the beginning of World War II. This is hardly a film for the faint of heart and as if to accentuate this point we sat, in provided ponchos, for about the last two-thirds of the film under wave after wave of rain pouring over Sydney Harbour.

Watching a film outdoors on Sydney Harbour in rolling rain running off my poncho-covered head is an experience I won’t soon forget.

 
Speaking of World Youth Day Lisbon, much of 2024 was spent finishing off a 12-month voucher for photo printing by having a selection of my photos from 2023 physically printed and then arranged by me in a photo album.
To mark the 1-year anniversary of the WYD Pilgrimage in July, I organized two get-together lunches for the Over 18s Pilgrim (Italy and Portugal) cohort which many appreciated.
​
I cannot comment about my fellow pilgrims’ experiences. But for me, a year-and-a-half on from Lisbon I’m only just coming to grips with, and processing through, what we all went through over those 22 hectic days of pilgrimage across Mediterranean Europe. But I can say that, for having done it once, I at least have more of an idea of what to expect a second time around and how to manage things and myself better than I did the first time, please God.

​In comparison to 2023: 2024 was an exponential increase of train trips, train festivals and rail heritage excursions with my father. Our travels took us north to the Hunter Region around Newcastle and as far south as Goulburn and the Southern Highlands. Indeed, there were many long days with very-early morning starts. But we enjoyed ourselves nonetheless, yet we were very tired by the end of those same days.

​
September saw me travelling by airplane up to Brisbane for the IGNITE Conference 2024 organized by Emmanuel Community and its Ignite Youth ministry team.
This was the real curveball of 2024 and it was my first ever experience of IGNITE.

​All the talks by various speakers that I went to were good and informative on different parts of the Catholic faith life. A special stand out was the Archbishop of Brisbane, Mark Coleridge’s talk on Encountering the Scriptures where he discussed how the bible “goes to the heart of hopelessness to find a hope that cannot be destroyed.”
He truly enkindled in his audience a greater appreciation of “the black fire on white fire” as the Rabbis describe the Holy Scriptures.

The rallies at IGNITE were experiences. There was much good in them, but by the end of the three-and-a-bit days I was ready to run back to my bunk-hole at home and not have another thousand decibels going right through my body.
​
After attending IGNITE and commuting across Brisbane each morning and evening, it has confirmed to me that what’s needed is smaller and quieter events where good conversation can take place. There’s a place for the big events, as long as they are not the only option available.

​On a less frazzled note, that same month I also started shooting 35mm film with a re-loadable plastic point-and-shoot camera. It has been a nice change of pace from taking photos with my smartphone.

 
I don’t really know or have even an idea of what 2025 will bring, apart for the Jubilee Year of Hope that has just begun. Dear God, may this new year see an outpouring of Your love and of experiences of hopes and dreams fulfilled.
 
​
Let’s see if there’ll be a 2025 Review, eh?

 
Vincent Cavanagh
3 Jan 2025

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 ;)

​
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!’​
​

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

A selection of photographs from mine and my father's journey on Transport Heritage NSW's NSW Rail Museum Express on Easter Sunday (31 March 2024) to Thirlmere and back again behind NSW AD60 Class Garratt Steam Locomotive No.6029. Enjoy!

Vincent Cavanagh
3 Apr 2024

Trains, trams and automobiles.

My father and I were in attendance on Sunday (25 February 2024) for our first Sydney Tramway Festival, which is held annually in Loftus, NSW. We had booked tickets for the Sydney Tramway Festival Express from Sydney Central to Loftus, and back, aboard the Sydney Single Deck Suburban F1, a.k.a. “the Red Lady”, which is operated under partnership between Transport Heritage NSW, Historic Electric Traction and Sydney Trains.

We departed Sydney Central at 9:28am, travelling on the Eastern Suburbs Line to Redfern before continuing on down the Illawarra/South Coast Line proper towards Loftus railway station. We arrived at Loftus two minutes ahead of our scheduled arrival at 10:20am.

​Upon leaving F1 we were greeted on the platform and issued our tickets to the Sydney Tramway Museum by museum staff. The price of the entry tickets was included in the booking for travelling on F1.

​We had only about an hour-and-a-half or so to look around the museum before we had to return to the station for our return journey to Sydney Central at approximately 12:05pm. Thankfully when we got to the museum gates, we found out that the museum had reserved the coupled Sydney O-Class trams (#1111 and Powerhouse Museum #805) for the passengers arrived from F1.

We promptly took our seats as the tram set was about to head off on its shuttle along the rails to the Sutherland railway substation and back again, passing Loftus TAFE, University of Wollongong’s Sutherland campus and the Sutherland Army Depot.

​The Tramway Festival itself was not solely concerned with trams. The museum was host to classic automobile clubs, model ship builders and other modellers who were set up inside of Sutherland substation—sadly, we didn’t have any time to go in look ourselves—and the Sydney Bus Museum, which had brought along a heritage Sydney double-decker bus and Yellow Cab Co. taxi for visitors to ride in for the price of a gold coin donation—yet again, too little time.

​After grabbing lunch from the 1st Sutherland Sea Scouts BBQ set up under the awnings of the Railway Square waiting shed (1907–1973) and a transference of monies inside the Museum Bookshop we made our way back to Loftus station to await the return of F1 from a siding in Waterfall station.

We returned to Sydney Central at 12:55pm and made our farewells with F1. The second, and last, shuttle of the day would be leaving at 1:30pm.

All in all, it was a very full day out indeed.

​
Vincent Cavanagh
27 Feb 2024.

On 28 January 2024, my father and I partook in the East Coast Heritage Rail: Goods Road* Tour from Sydney Central Station. We were on the second of the two tours for the day: 11am and 1pm AEDT, respectively.

​The tour departed and arrived on Central Station Platform 3. It was a heritage consist of various Department of Railways New South Wales railway carriages and hauled for the day by a 421 Class diesel locomotive, 42105 ‘Chumsayer’, owned and operated by private owner Chumrail.

We were booked in an N type carriage at the front of the train next to 42105.

​Our train departed Central at 1pm on its balloon loop route encompassing the Inner West and Canterbury Bankstown regions. We headed out on the Western Line (T1) towards Lidcombe where we turned south briefly onto the Bankstown Line (T3) before turning back eastwards, just after Regents Park Station, onto the Sefton Goods Line. We passed through Chullora Rail Yard on the southern boundary of Rookwood Cemetery and then turned south once more heading through Enfield Marshalling Yards, one of the more major and visible reminders of the original extent of Enfield suburb before boundary redistributions by government.

After Enfield we re-joined the Bankstown Line proper at Campsie, passing through Dulwich Hill and having a gander** at the unopened Sydney Metro conversions of half of the Bankstown Line at Sydenham as part of the Metro South rail project.

We returned to Central Station an approximate hour-and-twenty-minutes after our departure.

All in all, it was a good day out on the rails, but I think it’s only helped crystalize my preference for journeys that have set destinations more so than just “wandering about”, but that’s just me.


Vincent Cavanagh
21 Feb 2024

* An unfortunate Americanization of railway terminology in the past few decades in NSW. Railways in NSW (at least from their inception) used the British railway vernacular (railway, lines, carriages). Whereas South Australia has actively used the United States vernacular (railroad, roads, cars) ever since the appointment of American William Webb as Chief Commissioner in 1922.

** Gander : to have/take a quick look.