From Australia: Busy Day for Maria

12 July 2008

Maria Brennan is a parishioner at Clifton Cathedral and she’s just began a memorable trip to Australia for World Youth Day (WYD). Maria’s keeping a diary for cliftondiocese.com and this is her fourth entry.

This was the last full day of organised activities in St Simon's parish, Rowville on the outskirts of Melbourne. Tomorrow we will be attending Sunday Mass before spending the day with our host families. On Monday morning we leave at 6.00 am for our long journey by coach to Sydney.

Today we had great fun riding on the Puffing Billy train (have a look at our image gallery) which took us on an excursion through the forests, fern gullies and farmlands of the magnificent Dandenong Ranges. Afterwards we took a bus tour to the Cardinia Reservoir (at a dangerously low level due to low rainfall) and en route spotted several kangaroos!

After a picnic lunch we returned to St Simon's for a briefing on their social justice programme and then shared their call to action by participating in community work. For me this meant serving afternoon tea to a group of elderly residents.  I’ve sent you a picture of this. 

Later we had a short social justice focussed liturgy followed by a celebration dinner and disco in the church hall where the camera was out again. 

Thank you so much to all our friends in Rowville who have made our stay so special - they even displayed a special welcome banner!

My diary will be shut for the weekend and I’ll be in touch again when we reach Sydney.

Bye for now.

Maria Brennan

Maria’s previous diary entry.

Meet more of our WYD pilgrims.

This week’s Clifton Diocese event for young people who couldn’t make it to Sydney.

Keep with cliftondiocese.com for regular WYD reports from our young pilgrims direct from Australia and Maria’s diary.