Great Western Highway leads Kate home
Great Western Highway leads Kate home
25 May 2021
Major Kate Young is Corps Officer for Orange/Bathurst Corps in western New South Wales.
Major Kate Young has lived or served in nearly every Salvation Army expression along the NSW Great Western Highway and says her latest appointment to Orange feels like “coming home”.
“It feels familiar to me, coming back to this area, not only because of my time [as a corps officer] at Dubbo but because of being in this area as an officer’s kid.
“My journey along the Great Western Highway, I suppose, started as a 14-year-old when Lithgow was my mum and dad’s first appointment out of training college. So, we spent 12 months at Lithgow and then I had three years when they were appointed to Bathurst, and I finished my schooling there.”
Kate admits, though, that returning as an officer alongside her husband, Major Colin Young, has been very different.
“As officers, we came back to spend six years at Katoomba, and we were then appointed to Dubbo, where we were for three years and had responsibility for Wellington. Now, here we are, seven years later, and we’re corps officers in Orange with responsibility for Bathurst. In a way, it almost feels a bit like coming home.”
According to Kate, country life is very different to city life and says years of having country appointments has helped her relate better to people because she understands the rural way of living.
“It’s a more relaxed way of life. You learn when you’re in the country areas to just roll with what is going on and adapt. That is so important,” she said. “You have to adapt to the way of life of where you are appointed, and I think if you do that, you’re going to have more success in reaching out to the community because you get to know what the community is like.
“I’m excited to get to know the people, to get to know the community and to see what can develop from there. It’s all about relationship and taking people on a journey, whatever that looks like.”
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