New Norcia - here be monks.

Just not many of them any more.  I think they said they are down to eight now, but they are recruiting if you're interested.  New Norcia is a monastery located a couple of hours north east of Perth. This link  A Short History will fill you in on the details that I omit, but the short sweet story is that in 1847 a couple of monks came to Australia from Spain and founded the Benedictine order of New Norcia in the great wilderness of Western Australia.  It's always mentioned as a place one must see when visiting in the Perth area and one hears of the fabulous New Norcia fresh baked bread and hand pressed olive oil.  So, given the excuse of a visitor from the US, Joyce,  my pal Robbie and I agreed that it was time to get up there to see what's what.

All this time I imagined that going to New Norcia would be a matter of driving to a town and then finding the monastery.  I had no idea that the whole town IS the monastery...the town plus about (if I remember the tour guide correctly) 22,000 hectares of surrounding land.   For some reason it struck me as very odd to be tooling along the main road and then suddenly happening upon a cluster of old style buildings and some paddocks with sheep.  One of those "blink and you might miss it" situations considering there is certainly no traffic light in town. 

We arrived at the museum and guest tour center for the 11AM tour and joined about 20 other eager tourists ready to delve into the history of Spanish religious settlement in WA.   Our guide ushered us like a herd of ducklings across the main highway (which in rural WA is a two lane road) and we started our tour at the first of several chapels.  We saw lots of chapels that day and what impressed me most about them all was that the majority of the wood work was done by one monk - he built alters, pews, tables, benches...the man was prolific.  There is also painting in most of the chapels, sadly though in it looks as if modernization is occurring and some of the original frescoes have been wall papered over.  Still, there is plenty to look at.

Our Lady of Guadalupe pictured below.

Most interesting engraved drawing on the main chapel walls.  Where else do you see disciples pictured in astronaut garb, Native Americans, or Japanese women?

The image above is inside this chapel.

This is a door at the girls dormitory entrance.  I found myself wondering if the young ladies of the day appreciated it in the slightest?

 Chapel in the girls dormitory.  Puts my dorm at Northfield Mt Herman to shame...shame I tell you!

 Detail of chapel dome.

Sheep that help keep the establishment solvent.  The monastery has always had to be self sufficient. 

Ale on offer at the hotel - a gorgeous old creaky venue suitable for weddings or a light toasted sandwich lunch.  We ran into a couple of fun women in the ladies room here and chatted for 20 minutes.

We enjoyed our visit and were lucky with both the weather and the wild flowers.   The flowers had started to bloom and the fields of what we think is canola were stunning on our drive up and back.  We finally had to just pull over to take some photos.  This is the remains of a former local agricultural hall...and this was also the view that captured Joyce's imagination most.  She wandered around through the bush taking photos, heedless of the warning "beware the bull ants".  A few minutes later she started shrieking, dropped her camera, and yanked her pants off unceremoniously to her ankles. That's what happens when the bull ants find you.  Up the pants first, and only THEN do they start biting.  If only I'd had the camera ready...

Nasty Sharp Pointy Teeth

Mike and I took another great adventure up to Darwin in the Northern Territory. Well, I can call it a great adventure but the reality is he had a business trip there to discuss the highly romantic 'electronic taking of inventory' in the warehouse.  He called spur of the moment and asked me if I'd like to go with.  Of course I said yes, because there could indeed be spectacular adventure involved.

Somehow the notion of a Territory in a big modern country is odd...makes one think remote, wild, uninhabited...things that sure, you know are part of the whole Australia experience, but as an American you expect to be more like rural Wyoming.  You know...thinly populated but still one of the gang.  I'm not sure that's the exactly what the NT is like.   Here, find out more 

The Northern Territory has a population somewhere around 220,000 hearty souls in a land mass two and a half times the size of Texas.  Texas is pushing a population of 26 million and there is still PLENTY of room.  Wyoming - one of the most desolate places I'd ever experienced, has a population about double that of the NT.  You get the picture.   There aren't many people around.

And interestingly, wandering around Darwin, I noted that the mix of people hanging out in the CBD consisted primarily of cotton clad European backpacker types who cleverly arrive to satisfy their outback longings and checking another continent off the list in the location closest to the inexpensive beaches of Bali.  This is a very good plan indeed. From Perth it is a 4+ hour flight.  Further proof there is just nothing close to Perth.

Getting off the plane felt like hitting the Houston summer again.  Heat, humidity, and a touch of funk in the air.  It started to rain as we arrived and ended up pouring rain for several hours - giving us the opportunity to settle in to our club level room, take a misty photo of the bay, and figure out that one channel worked on the TV, the bedside lamps were both broken, the A/C needed service, and it takes 20 minutes for the hot water to make it to the 10th floor.  :-)  The rain broke eventually and we wandered out to see the town and source some dinner.  We walked up one side, down the other, then over to the casino/beach area for a fruity tropical cocktail and finally down to the yacht club harbour where we scored a nice Thai meal and enjoyed the sunset.

I'd cleverly booked us a tour for Sunday morning.  Pick up at 6:50am was prompt and we were joined by 9 other bleary eyed tourists for a day of natural wonders.  These natural wonders were indeed delivered by our rather jaded driver but at the cost of about 12 hours and over 450 km of driving.  Good way to get the flavour of the place but perhaps not the most relaxing.

Our travels took us to the fabled Jumping Crocs!!!! of the Adelaide River.  I confess, I had zero interest in the freaking saltwater crocs since I find them scary as hell, but they were part of the tour so I was trapped.  Turns out they are actually very awesome and while still scary as hell, pretty neat to see live and in person.

These are fierce bad crocodiles. 

Most of them had missing limbs and ugly gashes healing up on their crusty flanks.

Our dampish croc excitement done, we headed to Litchfield National Park to view the exciting termite mounds (anything for fun in the NT).

And then to the highlight of the day, swimming in a gorgeous rock pool fed by two waterfalls.  You can see little people heads bobbing in the pool to the bottom left of the photo.

But here again, there are freaking salties!  Our guide regaled us with tales of the last poor innocent Japanese girl taken as we approached this delightful swimming spot but assured us the authorities cleaned all the crocs out after every wet season before they opened the pool to the public.  I was not as comforted by this as I might have hoped but figured any crocs had had a choice of tasty human morsels in the hours before we arrived.  I sneakily checked out the pool by pretending to enjoy the rain forest, giant banana spiders, and flying foxes before I dipped a toe in.

We toured several different waterfalls, and swam in some other rock pools before heading back to Darwin.  I reflected on the experience and decided I am just enough of a princess to not be keen on outdoor adventures anywhere that saltwater crocs live.  Perhaps it was an early childhood reading about horrible deaths that continues to haunt me, but my immediate reaction to anything associated with crocodiles is *shudder* and "no thanks".

Safely back to civilization and cleaned up we managed to snag a table at a really lovely restaurant in town serving indian/malay themed dishes along with tasty exotic cocktails to my amusement.

Mike had to work Monday so I kept myself busy wandering around the areas of town we'd missed on Saturday and doing a bit of shopping since the prices seemed a bit more reasonable than in Perth. The aboriginal art galleries were gorgeous and had a far better selection of art than anything I'd seen in Perth. This kept me happily busy until my feet started yelling upon which I retired to the hotel room and read my book.  It was a pretty day at last which meant the sun was out with a vengence - something my lily white winter skin is not up for.  Here are some miscellaneous photos...

Church - the original stone facade remains but the rest of the building was blown away (along with most of Darwin) in cyclone Tracy Christmas 1974.   I liked the contrast of the modern and old.

Government House above, Parliment below. 

Extra attractive Coat of Arms on the Parliament building and public art in the surrounding area.

And lastly - a fantastic boat that I watched for a rather long time from the hotel balcony.

Tuesday morning Mike took care of a few more business items and we had one last wander around town before heading to the airport.  I think Darwin is a great jumping off point for anyone wanting adventure in the Kimberly or Kakadu but as a destination in and of itself, once was probably enough...mostly because they have those creatures with the horrible nasty sharp pointy teeth :-)