Rick and Rae's Travels: Sat, 7th to Sun, 8th May

It's time to leave Heron Point. We've enjoyed out stay but its time to move on to New Norcia - a monastic town located approximately 130kms north and inland of Perth. The town was founded in 1846 by Dom Rosendo Salvado and today is the home of a small community of Bendictine monks.

We were able to camp on the outer edges of the town's oval and next to the monastery, for a small nightly fee. There was no power, water or any other facilities. It was also very hot and dusty. The main drawback though, was that we were only a short distance from the main road to the Northern Territory, so there was a lot of traffic and most of it was huge trucks hauling mining equipment.

We went into the visitors' centre and booked a tour of the town to take place at 11am the next day (Sunday) as we had just missed the last tour of the day. We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the outsides of the historic buildings before having a beer on the deck of the New Norcia Hotel. The hotel was built in 1927 to provide accommodation for family members visiting the monks, and is still owned by them. Fresh bread and cakes are still baked daily by the monks in the wood-fired ovens and wines, spirits and olive oil products are still manufactured.

Sunday is another warm and sunny day and after a sleep-in and pancakes for brekky, we spend two hours on the guided tour of the buildings which is extremely interesting. It was also Mothers' Day and Rick gave me a small, individual chocolate mud cake which I thoroughly enjoyed later in the day!