First-quarter Blog Digest for 2026. What’s been happening.
 
Website-wise, there are now ‘next-post, last-post’ buttons at the bottom of each World Youth Day Lisbon blog post for ease of navigation through that series. It just took a lot of time, repetition, and wrangling with the Weebly website editor to get it done. Hooray!

Art-wise, I did have a day spent doodling out ideas for Bishop Stumbers cartoons, which was a positive. Most of them were about what said bishop might get involved in on a WYD pilgrimage. We shall see if some of them might get developed beyond their initial ballpoint drafts.
   Rattling about my brain at the moment is a possibility of re-drawing the CavanaghArt bird logos to better reflect my current style of art. The original set of birdies are well and truly about a decade old at this point, in 2026, and I’m certainly not the same artist I was back then. Whether anything actually happens on this idea, or it just keep rattling around my head, is another matter.

​Also, after the suggestion of a friend, I have been down the rabbit hole of investigating what it would take to self-produce stickers from my art and my conclusion was that, for me, it would be far more effort than it was worth. The shear amount of equipment, testing of cutting depths, sticker paper stocks, lamination, and software quirks is, to my mind, on a par with near-professional, home coffee-brewing: metric scales, correct dosage of coffee beans, the right grind size, purified water, puck preparation, flow rate, etcetera. I already have enough furores of my own with trying to convince the home printer to print on the paper-card stock I want it to. The last thing I want is to increase the number of machines throwing hissy fits in my face because it’s the wrong phase of the moon when I’m at my wits end racing to print something off for a special occasion the following morning.
   I’m not ruling out that stickers might happen, just that doing-it-myself is not for me.
 
On the personal front, after 2025, I’m still recovering from burnout. Though it’s not helpful when one continues to get sucked into the temporal blackholes of YouTube (the “new” smoking​), be overwhelmed by dehumanising discourse around ‘Artificially Intelligent’ generation of images online, and catching oneself interrogating any creative idea for art that pops up with whether, or not, it passes cost-benefit analysis. Talk about being brain-rinsed into mechanistic thinking, oi vey!
   It’s all indicative of the fact that there’s been a distinct lack of humour in my life of late. All fret and no play makes for a crabby, frustrated artist. The sensible thing would be to just say, “stuff the lot of it (AI generation) and do it (Art) anyway!” without expectation for it to — ahem — “perform well.”

   ​Thankfully, there have been some diversions in the form of meeting up with WYD friends at a Lunar New Year’s celebration, birthday party invites, wandering around the odd bookshop or two, colouring projects for others, and the odd heritage train ride here and there. A main issue for me is a lack of motivation and sufficient reason for me to overcome lethargy and get outside, physically and mentally.

I know that one should “never say never”, but with where I’m at right now I don’t see myself going to Korea in 2027 for World Youth Day Seoul.
   Don’t get me wrong, I do have strong emotions towards the next WYD, and more so the friendships born of the last one, but that doesn’t out-weigh knowing first-hand what the shear toll a WYD pilgrimage can be on a person and how much it truly demands of them. Which isn’t anything I’m willing to put myself through again—especially if it’s not what God intends me to do.
   At the end of the day, it’s all in His hands, not mine. 

8 Jan 2026 – Year in Review: 2025.

18 Feb 2026 – First new bit of art that I have made in a long while.

27 Feb 2026 – Back to Loftus for the annual Tramway Festival.

3 Mar 2026 – Finally posting about the farewell V Set trip to Kiama last year.

​On a more positive note, I’ll leave you readers with this Part 2 video by Daniel Folta detailing his process of depicting the Nativity in oil paint. For myself, it is a calm and meditative experience watch him bring his painting to life.

​Until next quarter, a holy Triduum and a Happy Easter to you all!

​
Vincent Cavanagh
3 April 2026

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

I’m not going to lie. 2025 is a year I’d rather not revisit.

• Yes, it was the Holy Year of Jubilee 2025 “Pilgrims of Hope”.
• Yes, we lost Pope Francis and gained Pope Leo XIV.
• Yes, Carlo Acutis and Pier Giorgio Frassati were canonised as Saints.
• Yes, there were heritage transport trips and watching movies with my father.
• And, yes, I got my (total) step count up an awful lot during the year.

​But, looking back, I cannot see any of the positives for the shear, personal weight of disappointments that have dogged me throughout 2025. (As well as bouts of F.O.M.O.)


At the start of the year, I thought I had a direction as to what I should do only for that smallest glimmer of something—anything—to be taken away. That seemed to be the running theme: think that you might finally get something, or somewhere, and then have it taken away from you. Again.

I expended an awful lot of my energy going basically nowhere, which resulted in my art being the most visible casualty of 2025. Not aided by personal events and the ‘Artificially Intelligent’ miasma afflicting all terminally-online-artists that is: why bother?
As well as treating any brief spark not as an invitation to creativity but as something that had to be put through the third degree of a capitalist cost-benefit analysis loop that buried both the spark, and myself, ever deeper into disembodiment. What point is there in creating if The World is just going to continue in its agenda to eradicate every last place on the face of the Earth that a creative might find to take shelter in and, maybe, even meaning.


2025 was, for me, exemplified by isolation and disconnection. Peer-to-peer faith gatherings that no longer pretend to be for anyone not already living within 10–15 kilometres of the events. Trying to gather interest for things by yourself to mark the Year of Jubilee only to be left by the end of it with a distinct impression that I was at the very bottom of everyone else’s social list or not even registering on their RADAR. Not to mention seemingly everyone else and their dog deciding to disconnect from all social media and not informing anyone whose only connection to those said same people is through social media of what they’re doing BEFORE they do it.

I hope everyone else enjoyed the 2025 Jubilee because my year was shit!


Vincent Cavanagh
8 January 2026

Vincent Cavanagh
1 December 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.

​
Vincent Cavanagh
30 September 2025

This is mostly down to the year, for me, starting with a “sort of” setback which left me in a disoriented state for the first quarter of the year, or so, and not well disposed to doing anything particularly creative in the direction of new artwork. Nor did I feel it worthwhile to post anything about my father and I visiting the Sydney Bus Museum in Leichhardt for one of their open days, or our second visit to Hunter Valley Steamfest in Maitland either, or attending the 2025 Hunter Valley Airshow.

What has been occupying my attention, after a brainstorming session of possibilities with my mother, has been planning, mapping, testing, organizing, promoting, and leading Young Adult (18–35) Pilgrimages to the four Jubilee Shrines of Hope in the Diocese of Broken Bay for the 2025 Jubilee Year of Hope:

• St Mary Immaculate Manly – Shrine of Hope for Priests and Vocations.
• Our Lady of Dolours Chatswood – Shrine of Hope for Young People.
• St Patrick’s and the Shrine of JPII East Gosford – Shrine of Hope for Families.
• Our Lady of the Rosary Cathedral Hornsby (Waitara) – Cathedral of the Diocese of Broken Bay.

​The whole effort was started, for the most part, because I didn’t expect anyone else to try and do something Young Adult-focused at a Diocesan–wide level for the Year of Jubilee, and because the Diocese itself had a reshuffle of ministry appointments and parish placements such that the former monthly Young Adult gatherings of previous years were dropped from the calendar without ceremony. For all appearances curial priorities had changed and if anything was going to happen Young Adult-wise it would have to be a self-initiated, grassroots affair, which I threw myself into with far more effort and emotion than strictly necessary. These pilgrimages are meant to give my fellow peers an opportunity for pilgrimage during this Year of Jubilee who aren’t able due to financial or familial circumstances to go overseas on pilgrimage to Rome like many others are doing. The four pilgrimages are spaced out to be once every second month to aid in giving a sense of the Jubilee truly being a year-long event and not just a blink-and-you-miss-it four-weekend marathon done-and-dusted, don’t-need-to-think-about-it-again situation.

It is a moot point as to whether a four-weekend marathon mightn’t have been a better draw card for the intended audience, given that there have been only a handful of pilgrims turn up for both the first pilgrimage to Manly in March for the relic of St John Vianney and the second to Chatswood in May to visit the relic of Blessed Carlo Acutis. It’s depressing when spur-of-the-moment picnics and such get higher turnout from young adults than the thing that’s had so much blood, tears, and effort poured into it to give them an opportunity to gain the Year of Jubilee Indulgence and a reduction of a chunk of our time in Purgatory currently accrued to each of us individually — and that is worthwhile! ¹

I have to regularly remind myself that these pilgrimages aren’t a “me”–thing, they are from and for God — He’s the one who sparked the whole idea of organizing these walks — for purposes that only He knows the end result of, I’m just here to organise them. If even only one person shows up, that pilgrimage was successful.

​
If you or anyone you know would like to join along for next two pilgrimages, the dates are as follows:

• 26 July 2025 – St John Paul II Pilgrimage to St Patrick’s and the Shrine of JPII East Gosford.
• 13 September 2025 – Our Lady of the Rosary Pilgrimage to the Cathedral.

​¹ The Jubilee Indulgence is explained in an accessible and down-to-earth way to all by Bishop of Wilcannia-Forbes Columba Macbeth-Green in the video linked below:

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

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