New Norcia

New Norcia Hotel

Whoa, it's cold in the tent tonight.

Our last camp was at Cape Le Grande National Park, well over a week ago. The temperature that night stayed above tweleve degrees centigrade.

We left David's this morning, at about ten o'clock, then stopped off at Subiaco to do a little bit of grocery shopping before our departure for the north of the state.

We'd looked up Farmer Jack a few days ago and found the store at Crossways, checked it out and liked it so went back today. It took both of us a while to click our brains into gear after our break from travel.

Picked up a handful of groceries, bought some contreau and tangerine pate as well as a packet of some thinely sliced pastrimi and a cryovac packed cooked chicken from Deli Delights. The pate would go well with the rye sourdough we'd bought from the market yesterday and which we planned to have for lunch later in the day.

Also found a butcher shop that sold gourmet sausages and bought two lots to freeze and to use later this week or even next week.

As we drove out of the shopping centre car park, the sun was shining – a nice change after two days of rain.

Felt a bit sad to be leaving David, it was good being around him, even though he's very busy with work at the moment. Hopefully we'll see him again at Christmas time.

As we drove towards the outskirts of the city, I couldn't help noticing how much Perth has changed since our last visit, over Christmas/New Year 2004/2005. The city has certainly grown and matured a lot in that short space of time with a price to pay for the maturation. Eating out is expensive, even though a lot of the Western Australian produced food is very reasonably priced, this does not seem to flow on to the food service industry.

Fresh fish is expensive, as is meat. Housing prices seem to have not only caught up with Sydney prices but overtaken them as well. None the less, Perthians seem to love gourmet food, eating out, football (AFL), and keeping up with fashion.

It wasn't long before we were driving through Swan Valley, pleasant countryside, spotted with vineyards, wineries, cafes and surprise surprise, free chocolate tasting at the Margaret River Chocolate Shop. Couldn't by pass this place! Purchased some chocolate coated honeycomb, River Gum honey, some yummy tasting onion and thyme marmalade (which we decided would go superbly with our pate and sourdough) and some Dutch cocoa. At the coffe shop, Andrew had an espresso while I nibbled on some of the honeycomb.

About 1.30 p.m. we found an attractive looking park at Bullsbrook...Wally Jones Park I think it's called. It has toilets, bubblers, picnic tables, shade and a funny looking rusty metal cow (perhaps it's a bull?) with a wind up tail that turns a cog inside the animal's body - which can viewed through a perspex window shaped like the spot on a cow. While we were having lunch a painter turned up, presumably to paint the cow/bull, but we weren't there long enough to see any of the results.

Next stop would be New Norcia.

New Norcia is in the Avon Valley.

New Norcia is the only monastic town in Australia.

New Norcia is where we planned to spend the night.

New Norcia is where I'm writing this blog.

New Norcia is where we had dinner tonight, in the New Norcia Hotel.

Everything in New Norcis is owned by the Benedictene Monks, yes, even the hotel and the roadhouse.

Our camp site cost us seven dollars, that's right seven dollars for the night. We have the use of public toilets and the shower at the roadhouse. We could have cooked tea tonight but the menu at the hotel dining room was very reasonalbly priced and the meal we had was of a high standard.

Honey Pie had Green Thai Beef Curry and I had Chicken Breast Tandori, both served with jasmine rice. Yum, the chicken breast (three generous portions) was melt in your mouth, and served with mango cutney and cucmumber raita.

Bread is baked at the monastry each day and sold through the gift shop and the roadhouse. We're hoping we'll be able to purchase some sourdough to have for lunch tomorrow and the next day.

At eleven tomorrow morning we plan to join a tour of the town as well as visit the museum and art gallery.

As yet we haven't decided which route we'll take after we leave New Norcia. We can continue on to Morowa, Perenjori, Yalgoo then to Geraldton, following the Monsignor Hawes Trail or do a coast trip and cut across via Moora to the Nambung National Park. But we don't have to make a decision tonight....

I found this beautiful rose growing in the rose garden out front of the New Norcia Hotel. The rain had destroyed all the other roses, as it had done in Subiaco over the weekend.