I found myself in Brisbane today after a rather late flight from Perth. You’ve gotta love Perth - it’d just be more convenient if things were a little closer. Incidentally, I’ve found the most frustrating thing in the world (well, maybe not the most), is that on a plane the windows don’t necessarily align with the seats, so you may have to lean right forwards or skew your head right back to see out the window. SO frustrating! Maybe that’s just me.

The first thing that I learnt when arriving in Brissie is that there are no smaller shire councils, but rather one Brisbane City council that covers the greater Brisbane area.

In the morning, I met with a group of young people from all over Queensland, who quickly began telling me how I had come to God’s own place. One interesting young bloke was from a place called Mount Surprise (pop: 65). Despite receiving large amounts of hassle from his mates for talking about his home town (they kept creeping up on him and yelling out “SURPRISE”), he talked about his love of the place. He moved away from home to boarding school in his early high school years. Did he regret the move? Absolutely not! Although it was difficult, he reckons if he stayed in Mt Surprise he would never have met any of the interesting people he now calls mates. It made me think how different his life would have been had he not left for school.

I went and checked out the Mt Gravatt PCYC. It’s a cool hang out place, built around a giant skate park. Everywhere I go - whether it be Norseman, WA or Brisbane, Qld - there are billions of skate parks. Every town and every local council seems to have a skate park. It’s ace to have, but I do wonder why there are so many of them - often within short walks of eachother. Skate parks are great if you like skating, blading or BMX, but what if you’re not into it (or, like me, struggle to walk, let alone balance on a skateboard). Are there so many around because they are an easy way to say “we’re looking after our young people”?

It was also interesting to me that the place was pretty empty - which makes sense considering most of the work done at the PCYC is done when young people come in after school. It just seemed a shame that it was empty when I came in today. Wouldn’t it be cool if a school meetings (like student council or even some classes) or youth organisations having meetings would use these places during the day. I suppose that’s what youth/community centres are for.

Whilst in Brissie, I also checked out a place called Visible Ink. They are funky places (there’s one in Zillmere and one in Fortitude Valley). They are not exactly youth centres, but rather places where young people or organisations can come and use Visible Ink’s information (whether it be the internet or library) and expertise (youth workers) to develop project ideas and make them a reality. For a wanky Social Worker interested in community development, it was pretty cool! When I was there, there was a group of Indigenous young people training, and in some cases re-training, to become teacher’s aides.

I met one of the youth workers there who was only 24 years old herself. She told me about one of the projects that she was assisting with out of Visible Ink. It was a project called the ‘Z Factor’. It started when a group of Zillmere young people of Polynesian backgrounds came to Visible Ink and asked for help in putting on a drama production. So with her assistance they began to put together a production about the colonisation of a mythical Polynesian island. Soon enough, as word spread about this production done by young people, they had people wanting to be involved from all over Brisbane. The idea is that the Visible Ink youth worker assists the young people to use their own skills to create the entire production. It’s being performed at the end of August. Pretty cool….

I chatted with the Visible Ink youth worker for quite a while about faith, and the role it plays in her life. Faith in her God is central in the way that she conducts her life. She explained that God was not a simple given in her life, but rather it had been a process in finding where God fitted in her life. Now it helps to define her life.

I asked her whether faith was important in the lives of the young people she works with. She said, “some of them place importance in a faith in God. But many more have a faith in music, faith in sport, faith in youth workers, faith in each other.” I thought that answer was pretty cool.