Listening Tour Week 8: NSW & VIC

Listening to local leaders reimagine connection, care, and courage, one place at a time. 

Communities visited: Central Highlands Neighbourhood Houses (VIC), Bankstown Senior College (NSW), Firefly Bay & Basin, Vincentia High School (NSW South Coast), and Geelong Sustainability (VIC) 

This week, the PLACE team travelled from regional Victoria to Western Sydney and down to the South Coast of NSW to four very different settings, each asking big questions and modelling grounded, community-led answers. 

Words that stayed with us: 

“We are the beginning and start for people. We are the Google.” 
“For the first time in my life, I feel special. I feel like someone is looking after me.” 
“How do we build houses for the long term, not just a quick fix?” 

In Creswick, we met with the Central Highlands Neighbourhood Houses, a network of purpose-driven spaces leading quiet revolutions in social connection, adult education, and local innovation. From social enterprises and emergency relief to co-working hubs and creative inclusion projects, they’re showing how flexibility, trust, and lived experience can power extraordinary local impact, on shoestring funding. 

We stepped inside Bankstown Senior College, a school transforming approaches to education for post-compulsory-age refugee and asylum seeker students. Their Health and Flexi Hub aims to embed everything from optometry to trauma counselling within the school itself. It’s not a program bolted on, it’s a care model built in. As one student shared: “For the first time in my life, I feel special. I feel like someone is looking after me.” 

Down in Vincentia, Firefly Bay & Basin is cultivating youth voice and leadership through projects like the Youth Voice initiative. At Vincentia High, we saw students learning to research, advocate, and implement community change from pushing for BMX track upgrades to designing youth-led community consultations. This is systems change from the inside out. 

And in Geelong, a dynamic co-design session with Geelong Sustainability brought a different focus: climate, housing, and the future economy. As the region navigates its post-manufacturing identity, local leaders are asking bold questions - how do we make sustainability tangible? How do we build homes that last, not just for the short term? What does a just, green transition look like for all, not just the privileged few? 

Community insight: What works? 

In Creswick, it’s the blend of heart and enterprise. We saw a sector quietly tackling disadvantage with dignity by turning vacant buildings into community assets and showing what’s possible when risk is shared, and support is collective. 

In Bankstown, we saw how trauma-aware, cross-sector support transforms lives. And at Firefly in the Bay and Basin, the power of authentic youth voice was front and centre, not as consultation, but as design, delivery, and leadership. 

Meanwhile, in Geelong, we were reminded that place-based change isn’t only about services, it’s also about systems. Geelong Sustainability is demonstrating that climate solutions, housing strategies, and economic futures must be built with the community and tailored to place. 

“Sometimes you need to rattle the cages a little and let people above know what you’re doing.” 

“It’s sustainable when it’s led by community.” 

“We often work with less, less people, less businesses, less funding but what gets done with the less is incredibly astounding.” 

We heard hard truths, bold ideas, and quiet brilliance. What ties it all together? Communities leading, systems listening, and the shared belief that better is possible, when we build it together.