It was overcast this morning and rain has been forecast later in the day, so we headed down to Wannamal Road West to the Boonanaring National Park. We didn’t expect too much and so were agreeably surprised with some new wildflowers.

Last night we listened to the sounds of the Speedway until 11:00pm. The speedway is about two kilometres away from the caravan park, but the wind made it sound so much closer. It was the cars racing, not the bikes or go-karts, which probably added to the noise quota.

At 9:40am when we left Moora it was sitting on 24 degrees, and once the rain started after lunch it dropped to 16 degrees fairly quickly. We travelled a total of 180 kilometres, and the day was only marginally cut short by the rainfall.

We passed one squashed dead snake on the road on the way down south but were thankfully not troubled by any others for the period of the excursion. I was wearing my gaiters.

Russ did get a bit of a scare when he was walking past the desiccated, but smelly, remains of a kangaroo in the NP as a stumpy opened its mouth and stuck out its tongue as he was about to walk past it. He gave it a wide berth and it had moved on when he returned later.

We also had two kangaroos run across the road in front of us, but they were well ahead, and we had no need to take any evasive action.

Upon return to the caravan park, we found we had acquired new neighbours on both sides of us. We hunkered down for the rest of the day and spoke with mum before our tea. I also text Brett and we discussed the rain, and more rain.

This appears to be a good time to write a bit more about the Benedictine town after Bishop Salvado.

In 1978 the New Norcia (NN) Art Gallery and Museum was created in the area that had previously been St Joseph’s Orphanage for Girls. There are now daily tours conducted of the town, as well as tours relating to the Salvado era and the history of the Mission.

In 1986, through a daring robbery, the Benedictine community lost a valuable art collection which included some of the finest post-renaissance religious art in Australia.

Fortunately, the collection was recovered, with the exception of one painting, and there were three arrests. In due course, all the recovered paintings were restored and re-instated in the art gallery.

Beside the regular monastic day of prayer and work, which they are happy to share with visitors, the Benedictine community runs a number of business enterprises within the town that focus on hospitality and tourism.

There has been a revival of the traditional crafts of baking and olive oil production from the local olive groves. And Russ and I can happily attest to their delicious bread – multi-grain with fruit and nuts.

Also, measures have been taken to attract more people to the area. The Abbey Church territory has been reduced to the single parish of NN, while formal secondary education was discontinued in 1991 with the closure of the NN Catholic College.

A hostel for visitors, built in 1927, became the present hotel in 1955. Guest accommodation at the Monastery was greatly increased in 1981, and the former college buildings are now used for workshops, school camps and conventions.

People are also able to register for a stay at the Monastery and take part in meditation and downtime from busy lives in a spiritual retreat.

In 2012 the Institute for Benedictine Studies was established. Assisted by the Benedictine Sisters of the Good Samaritan (known as the “Good Sams”), its ongoing purpose has been to introduce the traditions of Benedictine Spirituality to the contemporary world and to offer the opportunity for study and research to the wider community.

The Good Sams is a Catholic congregation of religious women, commenced by Bede Polding, Australia’s first Catholic Bishop, in Sydney in 1857. They were the first religious congregation to be founded in Australia.

Bede Polding was born in England in 1794 and was orphaned at nine years old. His uncle, a Benedictine monk, took him into care and arranged his education with the Benedictine nuns in Liverpool.

He retired in Sydney in 1874 and died in 1877. His funeral was attended by over 100,000 people, and he was revered by both Protestants and Catholics. (Sorry, I got a bit off subject there.)

Over the history of the St Joseph’s Orphanage for Girls between 600 and 1,000 Aboriginal girls attended. While it was called an orphanage, the term was used loosely, and the great majority of girls had living parents.

For the first 80 years the number of girls in residence at anytime was around fifty, and the majority came from the NN area. A tradition developed among local families to put their girls into St Joeys to be trained and educated, and sometimes for short-term emergency care when the family was under pressure.

This tradition continued until the closure of the institution. The ages of the girls ranged from toddlers to women.

Girls who stayed at St Joeys until their mid to late teens usually left to take a position working in the home of a country family. The Sisters interviewed prospective employees before making placements. If a girl wasn’t happy she was able to return to St Joeys. Other girls went back to their families when they left.

St Joseph is the patron saint of workers. Throughout the history of the Mission, St Joseph’s Orphanage was responsible for the cooking, laundry work and sewing for several hundred people. The Sisters and girls also took responsibility for cleaning the Abbey Church and helping with a variety of seasonal jobs on the farms.

St Joseph’s was involved in this type of work for several reasons. They were training the girls for future employment, and it was essential to the running of the town.

While everyone worked it was the girls who had finished their educations who were the full-time workers.

Jobs were regularly rotated to give variety and to ensure that each girl developed a range of skills. The Sisters also rotated between the main work areas.

Although money was not spent for this purpose, the girls were inventive and resourceful in their play, and physical activity was encouraged. There were four or five picnics a year, usually associated with major feast days. On Christmas morning after Mass the Abbot visited and gave each person a present from under the tree which had been decorated by the Sisters.

Seasonal jobs for both girls and boys at the Monastery included jobs like olive and fruit picking, and these jobs were enjoyed. Others, like clearing paddocks of rocks before seeding and stacking hay after harvest, were not. The older girls and some Sisters also picked grapes to make into wine.

The boys of St Mary’s Orphanage gained work experience in the Mission flour mill and the Bakery.

From 1920 NN was the only educational institution in the southern half of WA catering to Aboriginal children, apart from the Moore River Settlement. (Aboriginal children were not allowed to attend ‘white’ schools.)

Until the early 1950s the academic level at the institutions in NN did not extend past grade 4. In 1953, with the extension of the school to grade 7, the boys from St Mary’s were integrated into classes and the school became a co-educational primary school/In 1956 new buildings were opened with the support of the State Lotteries Commission and the State Government.

In the 1960s St Joseph’s was classified as a State Government Native Residential School. In 1965 there were four teachers (all Sisters) and 109 pupils. By 1966 the number had risen to 125 pupils. During these years the older girls were encouraged to undertake secondary education at St Gertrude’s College in NN.

From 1940 to 1970 the kitchen at St Joseph’s provided meals for close to 250 people. They cooked lunch and tea for the St Joey girls, the boys at St Mary’s and, from 1952, the monks of the Monas

For most of its history St Joes used solid wood-fired combustion stoves which made the kitchen very hot in summer. It was not until 1964 that gas stoves were installed, along with a meat saw (previously cut by hand by the Sisters) and a large walk-in cool room for fresh vegetables which, by then, were brought up weekly from Perth.

Thursdays and especially Sundays were the traditional recreation days. Sunday afternoons were officially set aside for families to visit. During the football season the girls were allowed to go down to the oval to watch the game, and to view the ‘pants’.

Holidays became a part of the annual program in the 1950s. In 1944 the monks purchased a large, old property at Dongara as a holiday house. A couple of the younger Sisters took the girls there for a two week break during the Christmas holidays.

By the 1970s most girls went home for the holidays in May, August and December. The Sisters ensured that those girls who didn’t have anywhere to go would spend time with a family who volunteered to take one of the girls for a break.

In 1972 the Commonwealth Government announced changes to funding arrangements for Aboriginal children attending the school. In future, the funding would now go to parents who had their children at home with them.

In 1970 there were 75 girls, in 1972 there were 42, and by 1973 only 34 girls remained. In April of that year the decision was made to close St Josephs, and by 1975 all the Sisters had left Perth.

Most girls were collected by their parents or relations. Several girls who were attending St Gertrude’s College as day pupils became full-time borders there.

In October 2001 a Special Reunion Day for past pupils and staff of St Joseph’s and St Mary’s Orphanages was held at NN and was organised by the past pupils. It was attended by a large number of Aboriginal people and their families, many of whom had been past pupils.

Guests of Honour were Sr Teresa Gonzales, Sr Francis Pardo and Sr Pilar Catalan, all of whom came from Spain. Sr Veronica Willaway came from the USA. Sr Carmen Ruiz from NSW and Sr Visitacion Cidad from

Kalumburu in the Kimberley. All were past staff members and their travel expenses for most were met by Miss May Taylor, a past pupil.

One of the past pupils created a painting which is displayed at the Museum. I really liked it. It told the story of the girls’ lives in the orphanage. At the centre of the painting are the girls, a sitting symbol portraying them in different coloured uniforms.

Around them are the Sisters. The different coloured dots in the background represent the earth, grass and coloured flowers. The circles are the areas where the girls went for walks with the nuns. The large blue dots are the Rosary and the dark blue dots which run through the centre represent Moore River.

The painting was done by Sheila Humphries in 2009.