9th Dec - New Norcia

This part of the country is amazing, sand dunes as far as the eye can see and this was on the left side of the road.  All part of Nambung National Park where the Pinnacles are located.   When we set off from Cervantes, I had intended for us to take the inland route to New Norcia, however according to the map I was looking at the road should have been directly opposite if not a bit south getting back to the Indian Ocean Road, but it wasn't it was a little ways north.  We ended up heading south down the Indian Ocean Road.

We travelled via the Wanagarren NR and Nilgen NR to Lancelin.    We are still fortunate enough to be spotting some wild flowers along the way, even though we are now into summer.   This one of the prettiest we have seen, the fringed lily.  It was one of those drives, we probably only had a couple of hundred kms to travel today, but it took us about 4 1/2 hours, as we had so many stops taking pics along the way.  We have never seen so many black boys, growing wild along this stretch.

And some of them are quite tall, taller than the one we have at home in the front garden.   The skies are looking dark and dismal but we are managing to avoid the storms and rains so far.

My Darl just happens to find some flowers by the side of the road at different points, just a little collection to enjoy as we are travelling along.....
The first we even heard of New Norcia was way back at Weipa, people who had been said we must do this place.   We had heard the same thing from other travellers along the way, so make this one of our must do towns. 

We arrive at New Norcia just after lunch, check out the accommodation options, either $7 to park across the road by the sports fields, you need your own amenities, or $14 a night for power, shower and toot.   We go for the latter.   Looking at the skies we are hoping it doesn't rain tonight, as we can see the water tracks of previous rains running through the ground right through our camp site.  We have to camp there as there is only one power board to connect up to, so have to camp within reach on the most level grounds available.  We check out the info centre, in the museum, art gallery.

We do a bit of a self guided tour around town on our pushies.  First stop the shed, housing all sorts of farming implements, including this scrub roller above.  It is made from trees, bolts, wire used to clear land in preparation for seeding. Originally pulled by horses, then tracters, how hard did they do it back then.  New Norcia is a one off experience, it is the only Monastic town in Australia, founded by a Spanish monk back in 1847 and to this day the Abbot and monks still live and work here.  The buildings are so majestic and large, some I am flat out fitting in the camera scope.

Above is the centre and right side of the Visitor centre, Museum and Art Gallery (ex Old convent), we lost ourselves in there for a good couple of hours.  Left is the St Ildephonsus College, this was the boys boarding house and college.  We ran into a cook just outside who was there catering for a school group.  Apparently they have lots of school, church groups visiting for retreats etc.   This lady stays in this building when working there and told us of her ghostly experiences, now that would be something else. We took a peek inside the ground floor.

This is the chapel inside St Ildephonsus.   The girls had their own separate accommodation etc., St Gertrudes, also with in built chapel.  Though the monks live in their Monastery, which is off limits to visitors, unless you are a paying guest, you often see them out and about in the streets.  You are however guaranteed to see them in action at any of their 7 pray sessions throughout the day in the Abbey Church and they have church open to public every Sunday.   People get married here, have christenings etc.

Now this is a sight to behold, this is the New Norcia Hotel.  See the monks are very enterprising chaps.   Built in 1927, this is no ordinary country pub, still owned by the monks offering accommodation, meals, function facilities and tantalise your taste buds with an Abbey Ale or glass of New Norcia Wine.  Other local produce on sale here is olive oil, bread, nut cake, biscotti and Dom Salvado Pan Chocolatti.  We only tried the nut cake, very rich and yummy. We also caught half hour of the happy hour, half price drinks!   The best happy hour we have come across, who would've thought.

The piano room in the hotel.   The only down side to this quaint little monastry town, is that the Great Northern Highway, runs right through the guts of it.    This highway is most popular for transporting heavy, oversized mining machinery. We saw two humungi dump truck buckets go through while there and then on our way out of town the next day, we had to pull over for a few oversized trucks.

They do it well, with pilot vehicles and these are so huge they also have police escorts.  This one here I counted on the trailer and prime mover 112 tyres.   What amazed Darl and I even more was that this then had another prime mover attached in front, all up 1800 horse power to pull this rig through the hills.  The tyres belonging to this mining rig were transported on another semi travelling behind.   We quickly got off this highway and headed through the back roads to our next destination Toodyay (Toojay).