June 8 ... Moora

It took us a while to get away from Perth this morning as we wanted to leave everything 100% at Morgan's, but we were on the road by 10.30. Our first and only stop was New Norcia, a town entirely owned and run by monks and it was only about 180 kms from Perth. As soon as we arrived we bought some of their home made bread for lunch and it was fabulous. We then caught the 1.30 tour of the town, which was over 2 hours of very interesting history.

The Girl's College

The Boy's College

The Benedictine Monks have been in the area since the very early 1800s and now most of the buildings are National Trust. The order was established originally as an Aboriginal Mission to "educate" the indigenous population and the monks have always supported themselves financially. At one stage, there were four large boarding colleges operating with an enrolment of approx 520 students and a teaching staff of Marist Brothers and St Josephs Nuns. This schooling has finished now but all of the buildings remain and many have been restored. There are about 12 monks in residence today, most of whom are pretty old, but they still work around the place and, with help, they produce olive oil, wine, bread, citrus, and they have sheep, cattle and bees.

The Church Entrance

Another College

As expected there was some beautiful, albeit religious, artwork, and there was a lot of carved wood, in alters and pews, and striking architecture. One very interesting body of work was a "Stations of the Cross" which was done as sgraffito art. This is where a number of layers of paint, each a different colour, are put over the top of each other and then different layers are scratched off. In this piece of work there were four colours: initially red, then black, then white, with blue as the top layer. This must be so hard to do yet the detail was impressive.

Example of Sgraffito Art

The Hotel - serves Abbey Ale !

 After our tour we bought some more bread, olive oil and dukkah, then got on our way as it was getting cool and we wanted to get to Moora for the night. This is a nice, quiet, western town about the size of Tenterfield and, due to the recent rain, the area it is in is very green. The park is excellent so we have settled down for what is threatening to be a cold night.

Garry enjoying his "Monks" feast

WA in its greenery