Cervantes

Left Northham at 8.15 to what was a chilly but clear morning. We made our way to the historic town of Toodyay, pronounced (2J) with plenty of charming heritage buildings. After taking what we thought to be a short cut but in fact became a long cut, we made our way through the Avon Valley (WA road signage is woeful ). Unsure of what road we were actually on we ended up with a silver lining to our wrong road and ventured into the town of New Norcia. We could see some magnificent buildings and on driving closer found ourselves at this idyllic settlement complete with a Spanish-style monastery and buildings linked to an Aboriginal mission which was run by Spanish Benedictine monks. The monastery continues to be home to the Benedictine monks and it is possible to join them in the 1,500 year old tradition for prayers-6 times per day. The New Norcia hotel has a sweeping staircase, high ceilings and wide verandah-a very upmarket Best Marigold Hotel ! You can enjoy a delicious meal and have a glass of their own Abbey beer or a wine from the Abbey wine range. This is certainly a calm peaceful and still place.
Attached are photos of some of the buildings.
Eventually finding our way to the Indian Ocean coast line we booked into our fantastic overnight caravan park at Cervantes. We drove to Hanson's lookout then to Lake Thetis which contains stromatolites and strombalites, one of the earths oldest living forms of life. They appear as circular mounds on the waters edge (see photo)
Sunset was spent at the painted sands of the Pinnacles desert , which is studded with thousands of limestone pillars. These are remnants of compacted seashells that over millennia subsequently eroded. We took Mawson our little penguin mascot to enjoy the Pinnacles with us -he enjoyed having his photo taken at this amazing
place ! Our evening was complete watching a beautiful sunset over the Indian ocean.Read more