We did a little shopping before leaving town. The plan was to get to town called Toodyay which is only 20 km (12 miles) from Northam.
We stopped for morning tea at New Norcia which is the site of a Benedictine Monastery set up in the mid 1800s by Spanish monks who wanted to bring the benefits of European civilization to the aborigines.
The town is a monument to their efforts. There are four large boarding school buildings and many others in addition to the Abbey Church and Monastery. All the schools were closed in the 1970s and are now used for camps and conventions. The girls school now includes a museum and art gallery which serve to remind us of the history of the place.
It is clear that the Spanish monks were sincere in their desire to civilise the indigenous population and that they did what they did with great compassion and without much of the colonial fervour of some others. They started out to befriend the natives and were somewhat sympathetic to their culture. They were attentive to the welfare of their charges and built a large agricultural enterprise which provided food for all those that lived here.
The social changes in Australia since the Second World War have meant that New Norcia's primary purpose has gone and the community, now much smaller than it was, has to struggle to find a raison d'etre. The continue to grow their own food and now sell bread, olive oil, wine and other products of their labour. The old schools are hires out to organisation who need venues for their various activities and the museum and art gallery operate as a tourist attraction.
Sadly, the whole place simply serves to highlight the dramatic social changes which have taken place over the last half century with old fashioned value receding to be replace by some more enlightened views as well as many more materialistic ones. Presumably, New Norcia is destined to become a ghost town when the present community dies out and the supply of new monks dries up.
We reached Toodyay at afternoon tea time and found the Lavender Farm which offered an overnight camp ground to rally goers. There were about a dozen motorhomes already there and several more turned up later in the afternoon. Happy hour was lively and friendly with most people knowing at least some of the others. The owners come down and joined in before the setting sun brought a sharp chill to the air and we repaired to the Motley for the evening.