The beautiful south

It's 8:00 pm and we've just finished supper in the New Norcia monastery guest refectory; the only sound is a small bell ringing outside in the darkness, and this probably means that the monks have finished mass. At 8:00 pm last night "Bad to the Bone" was thumping through the Mount Magnet Hotel as the four of us played pool in the bar at the Mount Magnet Hotel; it was quieter than the previous night, when a fight started because because the bar staff wouldn't serve an under- age aboriginal girl (though her family were in the hotel the following morning, and a full reconciliation seemed to be going on). Mount Magnet is less than 400 km from New Norcia, but a world away!

We left Denham (Shark Bay) and the sea on Thursday, to drive down the west coast as far as Geraldton, and then to turn east and inland. On our last day in Denham we found a very well-recommended beach for snorkelling, Eagle Bluff. We hadn't been in the water long, though, before we met up with two sea-snakes. Now, all the guide-books tell you that they're not aggressive, just curious, "they will even lick a diver's face-mask" and may wrap themselves around your arm or leg in a friendly hug. The guides also say that they VERY rarely bite, and even then, may not inject venom. The trouble is that their venom is extremely potent, and so we decided to leave the water "with some expedition, and a little fluttered". After we'd dressed we walked up to the top of the cliff to watch the sharks swimming around a bit further out from the shore, and felt much safer.

The drive south was uneventful, until we reached Northampton, where Maryam discovered that the backpackers' hostel is an ex-convent. There was no going further - we had to spend the night. And so the four of us shared the big old building (which still has crosses etched into the glass above each bedroom) with Rowland, an itinerant artist from Fremantle, who was on a painting expedition aboard his Hell's Angel style motor cycle.

The next day we headed on to Geraldton and then turned east for Mount Magnet. By this time, we'd discovered Monsignor Hawes, a Roman Catholic priest who built eccentric churches in the outback, and we saw his handiwork in Geraldton, Northampton, Mullewa and Yalgoo! By mid afternoon we'd arrived at Mount Magnet. It's a remote gold-mining town in the depths of the desert, but one of the friendliest places we've found. We met and talked to all kinds of people here, including, for the first time, aboriginals. After our first night, we decided to stay an extra day to explore the area, which included an abandoned town-site, hills and caves in the desert, aboriginal art inside a hollow rock and lonely graves out in the mulga-scrub. Very poignant.

We left Mount Magnet this morning reluctantly, getting a friendly send-off from the hotel owner - who made us bacon and eggs to see us on our way - and the volunteer lady that we'd talked to in the tourist information office (the old tin shed where the town ambulance used to be kept) the day before. Driving south again, we passed through Payne's Find and finally left the red-ochre desert behind us to enter the green, gentler, wheat belt. Suddenly roads were busier and less straight, fellow drivers didn't wave back any more and the little towns along the way didn't look as frayed as they did earlier in the day. New Norcia greeted us with grand church buildings, imposing monastic archiecture and fine trees. It's left us feeling a little displaced; comfortable, yes, but hankering a little for the red dust and the big smile that you get in a rough and ready desert town that doesn't see many visitors and so wants to make them as feel as much at home as it possibly can.

(By the way, I'm sorry there are no links or pics in this post. It's a free connection, but it'll only handle one internet site at a time, so I can't search for sites.)