Master Planless

Because I'm new here and want to experience as much as I can, I find myself constantly booking myself up practically every minute of the day. If I don't have something planned, there's all these things I "should" be doing. I actually had last Saturday free, so I wanted to do something fun. The original plan was to head to Lancelin to try my hand at "sandboarding" (snowboarding on sand dunes), but it was raining so I thought I'd instead take a little country drive to see what I could find.

I drove up the Great Northern Highway about 2 hours to New Norcia, which is the only monastic town in the entirety of Australia. The town is named after Norcia in Italy (the other namesake of the town is apparently in Arkansas). Two Benedictine monks settled the town in 1847.The buildings do have a Spanish style, and there was a machinery shed that displayed a lot of old machinery that the monks used to make their famous bread and olive oil (both of which I bought), as well as tend to the land. The port they make is also quite good. There is really not much else there, but as with most of what I do, the trip was more about the journey than the destination.

As I drove out of town to the south admiring the beautiful scenery, I had a WTF moment. Something in the hills that I hadn't heard about, and just didn't fit in with the rest of the spanish architecture in town. As I was blinded by the sun, the thought crossed my mind that this was a UFO. Or a weather satellite. One of the two for sure.

The New Norcia Space Station is a 35 meter (40 yard) antenna and was built by the European Space Agency in 2003. There is a similar station in Spain and one in progress in Argentina, so there will be 360 degree coverage of deep space missions. Apparently this site in WA is a key place because it is at the perfect latitude and is remote from big cities to prevent any radio interference (no wonder I couldn't get any radio stations). Of course I knew none of this at the time. After New Norcia, I lazily spent the afternoon driving back through the Chittering Valley. There are several wineries and a very beautiful landscape. I mostly just stopped when I saw something I wanted to take a photo of, or a swing I wanted to swing on, or a trail I wanted to explore. Sometimes it's so nice to not have a plan.