A spiritual oasis in the Outback
Australian monastery an unlikely tourist destination
Setting out early, fully caffeinated in anticipation of the quiet and empty road before us, we skirt around the suburbs of Perth, get on the Great Northern Highway and leave the city behind.
Bush land and small farms line the road, punctuated with the occasional turnoff to some isolated town.
There is little to look at except the trucks trundling down to Perth, yet it’s essential to remain attentive, keeping an eye out for kangaroos who are famous for jumping onto the road at the wrong moment.
You can find some incredible things in the outback of Western Australia and after about two hours of driving we come upon one: a Benedictine monastery. This is New Norcia, founded more than a century and a half ago as a mission and now one of the state’s most unlikely tourist destinations.
I grew up about 96 kilometres away, which for this part of the world means “nearby.” Yet I have never actually visited. Rounding the final bend, with only one small sign to indicate we are almost there, we shoot straight through the town and out the other side. It takes only a couple of seconds.
To Dom Rosendo Salvado, the Spanish Benedictine monk who arrived in these parts in 1846, this landscape must have looked like an extraordinary, alien world.
After walking for several days with a handful of companions, carrying only what they and a team of bullocks could manage, Salvado came to this area because it was home to a large community of aboriginals, whom he planned to convert.
He named his monastery after the Italian town of Norcia, birthplace of St. Benedict.
Salvado died in 1900, but his vision continued and the monastery operated several schools through much of the 20th century.
The number of monks peaked in the late 19th century at 70 men; today, New Norcia is home to just nine monks, who are assisted by employees from nearby towns in managing the buildings and tourist facilities.
Despite its remoteness, New Norcia is never short of visitors, especially on weekends. Those who seek it out are a varied bunch: Motorcycle clubs enjoying the winding roads; corporate groups and schoolchildren staying in the former school dormitories; those seeking spiritual guidance from the monks; curious day-trippers like ourselves.
Casual visitors are unlikely to run into the monks, who tend to keep to the monastery compound, but you can arrange to meet and share meals with them or take part in the daily chapel services.
My boyfriend and I have set up a meeting with Father David Barry, a soft-spoken scholar who worked as a bricklayer and as a jackeroo — a cattle station worker — before joining the monastery in 1955.
Most Benedictine monasteries strive to be self-sufficient and despite their small number, the monks here have done a good job of commercializing their resources. Artisan bread, olive oil and wine containing ingredients grown on the town’s land are all sold under the name New Norcia.
Father David has devoted much of the past 15 years to research in the town’s archives, a treasure trove for historians and even more for the aboriginal community.
Under various government decrees between the late 1800s and 1970s, thousands of aboriginal and Torres Strait islanders were forcibly removed from their parents and raised in governmentor church-run institutions.
As a result, many aboriginal families know little about their ancestry.
From the beginning of New Norcia’s history, Salvado kept meticulous records including birth, death and marriage registers, which have helped aboriginal people from the region piece together their histories.
Before leaving town, we stop in the only building we hadn’t visited yet: The New Norcia Hotel. Built in 1927 to accommodate the visiting parents of the boarding school students, it is grand and welcoming with polished handrails and a wide, shady veranda, a relic of a bygone era.
In the corner, a group of dusty characters recover from a hot day’s work outside and I’m pleased to see the Western Australianmade Swan Draught beer on tap. We order pints.
As we drive away, I catch a glimpse of an intriguing sign indicating a restricted access road. I slow down and peer at it as we pass. It’s the turnoff for the New Norcia Station, a deep-space antenna with a 34.7-metre dish, built by the European Space Agency in 2003 to communicate with satellites.