After a quick breakfast on the beach by the picturesque Geraldton Lighthouse, we head inland to the real Wildflower Country. In this section, the most common were pink, yellow, and white everlastings, along with banskia, purple scaevola and in a few areas the rare wreath flower, which grows in a circle, flowers around the outside and green needle-like branches flat in the middle. Our first stop was Mullewa, which, along with being a well-known stop on the wildflower route, has many ties to Monsignor John Hawes. Hawes was first an architect, then an Anglican priest in the Bahamas, and later converted to Catholicism. He spent 24 years in this area of Australia, serving the communities on horseback, and holding open-air masses for interested indigenous people in places like “mass rock” in Mullewa. He designed and built a number of churches in the region, including Our Lady of Mt. Carmel in Mullewa and others we saw later in the day (Holy Cross in Morawa and St. Joseph in Perenjori). Next to the church in Morawa is a tiny one-roomed hermitage which is billed as possibly the smallest presbytery in the world!
We arrived in New Norcia quite late in the afternoon, and everything was booked up by a big tour group, so we had to continue on after a quick look around. It was unfortunate, since we’d looked forward to exploring Australia’s only monastic town, run by the Benedictine monk community since the mission arrived from Spain in 1846. Today they are also known for producing tasty wines, olive oils and baked goods.
One reason we may have taken longer than expected were the road hazards we had to be constantly on the look-out for: kangaroo, lizards, dive-bombing birds and flocks of Major Mitchell’s cockatoo. There were also giant, intimidating road trains, over one hundred and fifty feet long and more than one hundred tons of load.
Further south, as dusk approached, we passed into wheat country, with farmland, sheep, goats and beef cattle. We made a beeline for Freemantle, but didn’t arrive until late. The narrow one-way streets were no fun at all in the heavy rain, and we turned in for a chilly night at the local YHA.
