September 25, 2022
Day 69: Koojan to Bindoon
It was forecast to get down to 3 degrees last night so I stayed in my sleeping bag til 6:45. It was cool but not too bad when I got up. I have been doing reasonably well at packing quickly but regressed this morning to taking nearly an hour and a half. There were heaps of little midges around which I hadn’t noticed last night, potentially cause it was too windy.
Even though it was sheltered in the salmon gums, there was a south westerly breeze once I started riding. It took me nearly an hour to get to the next potential campsite, less than 15k down the road, at Gillingarra. It would also have been fine on the oval of the tiny town, behind a sports club building, and it did have toilets. It wasn’t as nice scenery as the salmon gums and I used their toilet and bin this morning so I feel I got the best of both worlds.
Then I trundled down to turn east along the Gillingarra-New Norcia Road. It was 9:15 and I was getting a little worried about making it for the 11am tour. But the road was delightful so I didn’t worry too much.
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The road climbed up out of the valley the main road runs through, past green and yellow fields. I only saw two cars in around 18k, although one was a farmer in an old ute and he passed me twice. Then I got to enjoy the ride down into the next valley, which seemed a bit less domesticated. Potentially that was just cause the roadside trees were some kind of box which grows more scrappily than the bigger gum trees. There were also fewer farms so I had less road numbers to go on. Before I really expected it, I saw a caravan trundling along ahead of me and realised I was at New Norcia. The road came out just at the 60 sign heading into town. It was 10:20, so I had time for a coffee at the roadhouse before the tour. Dad had said the coffee wasn’t great but I didn’t find it too bad. The fruit and cinnamon scroll I had with it was delicious. I still can’t work out what they did to that coffee in Carnamah to make it so awful.
New Norcia is a Benedictine monastery, set up in 1847. That makes it pretty old for WA, given Perth was only built in around 1820 I think. The first Abbot and his monks came from Spain via Norcia in Italy. They seemed to have a reasonably good relationship with the Yuet Aboriginal people. Most of the buildings are from the time of the second Abbot who came in 1900, set up schools and had a much dimmer view of the Aborigines. They also took stolen generation kids into segregated boarding schools through most of the 20th century and treated them badly. The schools only shut in 1991.
The tour went for two hours which sounded like a lot at the beginning but only visited about half the buildings!
There are now only 6 monks. They take vows basically to live at New Norcia for the rest of their lives, pray six times a day and not talk at meals and that’s somehow declining in popularity.
I bought a combined tour/museum entrance but didn’t really have time to look at the museum and art gallery. I am not sure about cooking facilities at my b&b tonight so I got a toasted sandwich at the roadhouse again.
All this meant I didn’t leave til 2, then rolled out into a stiff now south easterly breeze. I got back onto the Great Northern Highway after a separation of about 1500k since just after Port Hedland! It was very hilly, but eventually I made it to Bindoon and my nice b&b room by 5:30. I haven’t seen the windmill yet though.
Today's ride: 85 km (53 miles)
Total: 4,775 km (2,965 miles)
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