New Norcia

Monday:  A showery day with some welcome bursts of sunshine – and a long day.  I left the hotel at 8 am for the 140 km drive to the Benedictine township of New Norcia.  It took well over 2 hours, the long track through Perth’s suburbs being slow and busy.  Once outside the city, the drive through the Swan Valley and Bindoon is quite pretty.
New Norcia was smaller than I anticipated.  It comprises 69 buildings now, nearly half of which are on the national heritage register.  The entire town belongs to the Benedictine monks, a much reduced community of nine these days.  It was founded in 1847 by two Spanish monks as a mission to the local aborigines.  Eventually it grew to house 4 boarding colleges:  two for aboriginal children, and two for the general community.  The Marist Brothers and Josephite Sisters staffed these for most of their operational life.  The Spanish architectural influence is apparent in all the buildings.  At one stage over a million acres were under the agricultural care of the monks and their local staff;  cattle, sheep, olive groves, vegetable gardens, cereal crops etc..  This is now reduced to about 20,000 acres.
I took the 2 hour guided town tour which gets you inside many of the buildings not open to the public, as well as providing a wealth of historical information.  Then I headed to the hotel:  licensee – Order of St Benedict Inc. I tried the Abbey ale, served in special abbey beer glasses;  some herb bread from the abbey bakery; and potato and leek soup (which they did NOT claim came from the abbey garden!).  Then I did some more wandering around before I came back to the abbey museum (and, of course, gift shop).  The museum is very comprehensive in covering every aspect of the monastic life and history of New Norcia.  The art galley displays a wide range of paintings etc.  that have been accumulated over the years, many from famous European artists, as well as work of the gifted monks themselves.  Being the only monastic town in Australia, it was well worth visiting and I thoroughly enjoyed my time there.  It would be a delightful place for a retreat, except for the fact that the Great Northern Highway runs right through the middle of the abbacy, and an unending procession of road trains and heavy trucks create much noise, as well as increasing environmental damage to the old buildings.  They are trying to fins $20million to fund a by-pass around the town.
It was 5 pm by the time I got back to the hotel.  Have had a nice fish tea at an Italian restaurant down the street.  After this, time for bed and tomorrow Rottnest Island.
The pic is the original abbey altar carved from WA jarrah timber in Spanish style.
Other pics are here.