Just in - from Australia: Maria’s WYD Diary

09 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 first entry. 

Arrived Melbourne 9.00 am today (9 July) from Singapore and met by two members of the Solari host family, mother, Phil (Philomena) and son, Tom.

Very warm welcome at airport followed by equally warm reception at St Simon’s parish office, Rowville, where we met Parish Priest Father Martin Dixon.

The Solari family live in four bed-roomed single-storey house and have housed us in their lounge! Met two other sons later, Paul and Sean. Father, Mark, is away on business in Melbourne until Friday night.  All the boys are on the second week of end holidays (they have four terms per year - starting end January and finishing mid December with main holiday period of six weeks over Christmas and January.

Yesterday Jersey contingent arrived who are staying in Parish Hall! 

We will link up with our group tomorrow for the first round of activities including Mass, sharing of stories, hot potato lunch, visit to Melbourne Museum and Youth Festival - more info later when we have been through the experience!

This evening - have enjoyed a magnificent roast dinner and exchanged lots of information about our respective families.

Some photos attached can be seen in the image gallery of the right.

I’ll be in touch again soon.

Maria Brennan

Meet more of our WYD pilgrims.

Our most recent previous WYD report.

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