Moora, New Norcia, Cunderdin

We drove from Cervantes through Moora, an area known for its wildflowers and we were fortunate to be travelling at the time of the year when they are in full flower but we didn’t stop except for a few hours at New Norcia - home to a community of Benedictine monks who arrived as missionaries from Spain in 1846 and established a village in the hope that they could peacefully bring the local Aborigines to Christ! They had some success and with donations from Europe built a substantial community with monastery, chapel and supporting buildings which they now use as accommodation for conferences, tourism and the like. It is still a thriving village run by the order.
We stopped overnight in the busy wheat belt town of Cunderdin and then followed the 650 km “golden pipe line” constructed to enable the gold mining towns to survive by providing them with water from the hills near Perth and travelled the road used by prospectors who crowded this trail on horseback and foot over a century ago during the time of the great gold rush east. We too are headed for Kalgoorlie.