My friend Naomi and I arrived in the Kimberley eager to find out exactly what it means to be a young person in the North West of Australia.

We decided to check out what young people are up to in Wyndham. Wyndham is the end of the line on the Great Northern Highway in Western Australia. As we were combing the streets of Wyndham, we bumped into a priest (well, you don’t bump into people in Wyndham – you actually have to seek them out) who invited us to come and join in the celebration of Confirmation of 15 young people.

The local Catholic School is attended largely by Indigenous young people – a throwback from the era of Catholic Missions – so all of the 15 were Indigenous. We were invited to the “breakfast” celebrations (held at midday) after the church service where we got to hang out and play basketball with the young people. All of the young people talked about how important Wyndham was to them, as it was their home and their family and friends lived there.

They reckoned that the not so good parts about Wyndham were the heat and the violence. I wondered if the two were connected. Just one day in this heat had begun to make me a tad irritable.