- 4 min read
Reflections from the Spiritual Care Australia WA Symposium
When people hear the word chaplain, they often imagine churches, hospitals, or formal religious spaces.
They don’t usually picture steel-toed boots, red dust, pre-start meetings, fatigue management, psychosocial hazards, or conversations held beside haul trucks under floodlights at 5am. But this is where much of modern spiritual care now lives.
Recently, I had the privilege of speaking alongside my peers and giants in the world of FIFO chaplaincy, at the Spiritual Care Australia Symposium, about what it means to work as a FIFO chaplain within remote industrial and mining environments.
My presentation was part of a wider presentation on the heritage and current day practices of the work, and was titled A Day in the Life of a FIFO Chaplain, though what I was really speaking about was something much deeper than a daily routine.
I was speaking about walking alsongside of human beings, having a human exxperince within their chosen field, away from home and all motivates them to be there in the first place.
I spoke of the realities of working in a 24/7 production focused business. About loneliness in crowded camps. About resilience and emotional exhaustion existing side by side. About the invisible labour of leaders trying to hold teams together while running on empty themselves. About workers carrying grief, separation, addiction, anxiety, family breakdown, trauma histories, financial pressure, and silent despair into highly demanding workplaces.
And also, about humour.
Because FIFO workers are often incredibly funny and less sensored.
Dark humour becomes part of survival. Banter becomes connection. Teasing becomes relational glue. Chaplaincy in these settings is rarely solemn.
More often, it involves learning how to enter the rhythm of the site without losing your humanity within it.
During the presentation I shared:
“FIFO workers do not leave their humanity at the airport.They bring their whole nervous system to site - their grief, their relationships, their histories, their exhaustion, their hope.”
I spoke about how industrial chaplaincy is not therapy in the traditional sense, though it often draws on therapeutic understanding. It is not simply crisis response either. Much of the work happens in ordinary moments: Walking between dongas. Sitting quietly over coffee. Checking in after a shutdown.
Supporting leaders after difficult conversations. Helping someone regulate enough to get through the shift safely. Holding space for a worker who says, “I don’t even know why I’m talking to you.”
And yet they do. Because beneath every roster, every role, every KPI and production target, there remains a human nervous system longing for safety, dignity, connection, meaning, and somewhere to exhale.
At one point I reflected:
“Some of the most important conversations I have on site begin with absolutely nothing profound. We talk about fishing, weather, coffee, football, or how terrible the eggs are in camp. Human beings rarely arrive through the front door of vulnerability.”
One of the key themes I explored was the changing landscape of psychosocial awareness within industry. Organisations are becoming increasingly aware that mental health is not just an individual issue - it is relational, systemic, embodied, and cultural. Leaders are being asked to hold more emotional complexity than ever before, often without the training or support to do so sustainably.
I shared with the audience:
“Emotionally aware leaders are often the most at risk of over-functioning.The very reason workers trust them can become the reason they burn out.”
This opened discussion around chaplaincy as a protective and relational support within industrial systems.
Not by rescuing people. Not by over-functioning. But by creating spaces where workers can feel seen without judgement.
Ancient in heart. Modern in form.
I also reflected on the privilege of this work. FIFO chaplaincy allows you into moments that are deeply human: grief after a death back home, marital strain after months apart, the vulnerability beneath anger, the exhaustion beneath bravado, the quiet courage it takes for someone to ask for help in environments that still value toughness and stoicism.
One quote that seemed to resonate strongly with people in the room was:
“Most people on site are not looking for advice.They are looking for somewhere safe enough to hear themselves think.”
Over time, I’ve come to believe that spiritual care in these settings is less about answers and more about presence.
Less about fixing and more about companioning.
Less about performance and more about relationship.
As I closed the presentation, I spoke about the evolving nature of spiritual care itself:
“This is not care that sits outside the workplace.This is pastoral care incarnated within it. Ancient in heart. Modern in form. And deeply human, living and sustainable care.”
The symposium itself was a reminder that spiritual care continues to evolve in meaningful ways across Australia.
There are people working in healthcare, aged care, corrections, defence, education, and industry who are all asking similar questions:
How do we care for human beings well?
How do we create sustainable cultures of compassion?
How do we remain deeply human inside increasingly complex systems?
I left feeling grateful - not only for the opportunity to speak, but for the conversations afterwards.
Many people shared that they had never considered what FIFO chaplaincy involved. Others spoke about how surprised they were by the depth of relational and emotional work happening within industrial settings.
Perhaps that is the quiet reality of chaplaincy everywhere.
Much of the work remains unseen.
And yet, day after day, conversation by conversation, something deeply important is happening in these spaces.
Not dramatic. Not performative.
Just human presence meeting human experience.
And sometimes, that is enough to help someone keep going.
