Over the last couple of days I’ve hit the road again and travelled from Esperance to Kalgoorlie. The old iPod is getting a work out.

At Esperance (pop. about 13 000) I spent some time at Esperance Senior High School chatting with a bunch of year 12’s about the high-life and the low-life of Esperance. The general consensus is that Esperance is a wicked place to be - could do with a Macca’s and some better shopping - but the beautiful beaches and the smallness of the place make it great. An interesting thing we talked about was that they find that young people their age don’t have a cool place to hang out for - which means that the local beach carpark ends up being it.

They talked about how cool it would be if there was a place that they could hire out for parties (18ths, 21sts etc) - away from unhappy neighbours. A place where the community understood that it would be cool to party there, and would not be broken up by cops by 10pm. Seemed like a pretty sensible idea to me - the best solution for everyone.

Through Norseman, I drove up to Kalgoorlie (pop. about 30 000). I met up with the co-ordinators and youth workers of the Millen Street Project, who run a youth centre and youth program for largely indigenous young people who are not engaged in schooling. As well as youth centre programs and a counselling service, they are about to start an alternative schooling program for young people who do not attend school.

I also caught up with members of the City of Kalgoorlie-Boulder Youth Council. The Youth Council operate on a pretty big budget, with good support from their counsil and CEO, and organise huge youth events such as Youth Fest. In previous years, Youth Fest has got bands like 28 Days and SpiderBait to headline (as many as 6 local youth bands as well) and get about 2500 young people attending. They also run reconciliation projects and fundraise for heaps of charities. I was really inspired by them (and all the cool stuff they were doing) and thought that it was such a great example of young people given real responsibility. They also put on a mean arvo tea (choc chip muffins!).

Amongst other things, I also caught up with the Kalgoorlie YMCA and their youth officer. A really cool guy (who is only 19 yrs himself), who explained to me the ins and outs of Kal (it’s ‘Kal’ to those in the know…) and his dreams for the young people of Kal. He told me that he hopes to give young people all the opportunities that they deserve. Pretty wicked fella, and pretty cool place.

I ended up driving all the way up to a place called Menzies. Now THAT’S a small place.