Our Spirit Blog - 2025 - News Article

I’ve seen transformations. Lives redefined. Young men and women rediscover their inner strength. Veterans find healing. Everyday people step into a part of themselves they didn’t know existed.

We’ve normalised a “rite of passage” that too often ends in ambulances, arrests, and anxiety.

What if we changed the tradition?

The Kokoda Track isn’t just a trek—it’s a transformation.

At 17 or 18, our diggers stood shoulder to shoulder to defend our freedom. Now, our youth can walk in their footsteps—not just to honour them, but to find themselves.

Schoolies doesn’t have to mean numbing out. It can mean stepping up.

In an age where comfort is abundant and hardship can feel like a distant memory, it’s more important than ever that young Australians reconnect with the foundations of their freedom.

Australia, like many nations born of colonisation, carries a complex and painful history. And while we cannot rewrite the past, we are left with an uncomfortable question: What do we do with it?

In towns and cities across Australia, a quiet frustration is simmering among our young people. They’ve done everything society asked of them—studied hard, earned their degrees, taken on debt in pursuit of education—only to graduate into a job market that is too often closed to them. The promise of opportunity has been replaced with unpaid internships, insecure contracts, or the slow grind of applications that go nowhere. Many are living back at home, disillusioned, wondering what happened to the