Swan Valley, WA, Australia

As we’d been a bit rushed yesterday, Lyn and I rose early and whizzed back out to the Pinnacles for another look around. It was early, about 6:30 when we left and we got some quite different light than what we had in the evening. It was a bit nippy, we were both wearing jumpers!

We cruised through the Pinnacles drive for another hour and did a couple of short boardwalk lookouts before heading back into Cervantes, detouring to Hanson Bay lookout on the way. Hmm, we shouldn’t have bothered with this, it wasn’t at all interesting however we can tick it off the list.

Stopping briefly at the Cervantes petrol station was a nice surprise. $1.52 for Deisel, a pleasant change from the regular $1.80’s of late and the $2.00’s to $2.50’s we were paying in the Kimberley!

Glen was all packed up and ready to go when we got back to the park so we said our farewells and he headed off, probably to Merredin today I think. Not long after, the Coughlins departed to Gin Gin where they are going to do the Gravity Centre, leaving Lyn and I to have breakfast, shower and pack up.

It’s great having a GPS, you don’t have to look at a map but sometimes maybe you should. We followed the GPS without question and although we got where we were going with no trouble, it’s probably not the way we’d have chosen. Cervantes to New Norcia was today’s trip and I wasn’t expecting to tow across 50 odd km’s of gravel.

On 1 March 1846, a Benedictine mission to the local aborigines was started, led by the two Spanish Benedictines. The place was named New Norcia, after Norcia in Italy, the birthplace of St Benedictine.

The town of New Norcia has buildings in a Spanish style of architecture, along with some other historical sites. Among these are the two old boarding schools, St Ildephonsus’ and St Gertrude’s, the Abbey Church (containing the tomb of Rosendo Salvado), an old mill, a wine press, a hotel, and the monastery itself. The last Spanish Benedictine monk of New Norcia died on 18 January 2010, aged 99. He continued to prepare the bread for the monks and olive oil almost upon his death.

From New Norcia, Lyn and I travelled the last couple of hours down to Perth, booking into our caravan park in the Swan Valley around mid-afternoon.