Sheep & Monks

Hey,

So we decided to cut the blog into two sections. Just like when you get Paragraph breaks in newspapers so that the reader doesn't get bored and decide to go off and do something else.

We left the farm early-ish and headed down the highway to a place called New Norcia. Now New Norcia is the oldest Monastary in Australia, and the only one in WA. We arrived and headed for the museum, booking our tour and had a look around the place. When it was time for the tour, our guide Ricki, who had quite a history herself. She told us that when she was a nurse in the Vietnam war, she put some 'Purple Paint' on this guys bum who fell off his bike. That's what I remembered about her anyway. The tour started near a shrine to a miracle that had happenned shortly after the place was acquired, when a fire threatened to ruin the entire plantation they had, they resorted to placing a painting Mary in the fires path and prayed furiously untill the fire went back on its self. Nice eh?!

So the next bit was to head the the monks area, the general public isn't actually allowed in any of their buildings except the chapel, so we headed up there past the guest quarters and had a small history lesson on all there was to know about the two chapels they used. We later returned to the newer chapel to sit in on their afternoon prayer. We then headed off to the girls school, boys school and Aboriginal school. When New Norcia was formed back in 1876 the main man's idea of the place was to help and understand the Aboriginal people rather thatn to do what every other white man in Australia was trying to do at the time. So this was good stuff to hear, far from the barbaric history we'd heard from Europes first settlers in the country, pillaging, assimilating and generally being horrible to the lands Aboriginals. Holly was pleased, this is her area of passion in Australias history and for me it was good too, people being nice and wanting to preserve the original.

So after our tour we hit the art gallery and New Norcia Hotel, all of which were very nice and interesting. We'd spent hours in the place so we headed off at around 3 south towards the town of Gin-Gin. We'd heard that there wasn't much to see there so we planned a flyby visit on the way back to the farm. We ended up staying there for a while having a look around the tiny village, we got some food and had a mini picnic by the river on the grass trying to hold onto our food rather than having it snatched by some very friendly ducks. We had a walk down the river to see if we could find any marron but no success.

We drove back to the farm just as the sun was going down and made some food immediately.

So tuesday we packed some olives into jars, very ordinary...But in the afternoon we herded in the sheep with a view to putting these bands around their tails and male parts. We also had to tag the sheep according to age and gender and take some chunks out of their ears for recognition purposes. Holly's task was to make sure the lambs didn't run through the fence, to count the sheep that were marked and to let them through the gates once done. She also got to hold one of the new born baby lambs. Mine was to tackle the sheep, hold them on their back for the bands, then on the front for the ear bits. I've done much more humane jobs at the farm than this, but it was an experience. I left with some blood spatters on my shirt and arms and in desperate need of a drink. My back and arms are slightly achy today but this is nothing compared to what the sheep went through!

Ok, no more. We'll blog again soon. Stay safe and take care :)

David & Holly