Cadoux was slumbering amid golden fields shimmering in the heat when we called. Admittedly most northern wheat belt towns of Western Australia slip into hibernate mode in the week between Christmas and New Year but Cadoux felt like it had stopped. So quiet.

Hard to imagine was the scene at 5.54pm on June 2, 1979, when the roads we saw shimmering in the midsummer heat danced to a different jig in the evening winter gloom. 

Cadoux seems such an unlikely place for a powerful earthquake, but it was hit by a convulsion measuring 6.2 on the Richter scale. It opened 15km of great cracks in the ground, buckled roads, twisted railway lines, and cut power and telephone lines.

Left wrecked were the community hall, the Masonic hall, sports pavilion and the Post Office Store. WA’s second biggest earthquake (the biggest was a 7.3 at Meeberrie Station in 1941) moved the hamlet’s nine million litre water tank 43cm: unsurprisingly all the water leaked out.

Twenty-one of the 25 masonry buildings in Cadoux were damaged; only four of the 29 non-masonry were damaged. Falling masonry broke a child’s arm – the only recorded injury.

Most tall buildings swayed 200km away in Perth but little damage was recorded there, apart from the mercury leaking out of the Rottnest Island lighthouse.

After the ground stopped shaking damage to the school and houses was repaired, a new Post Office store built and an entirely sensible solution implemented for the lost recreation and social structures. All were gathered into the grand Cadoux Recreation Centre with social, sporting and cultural amenities – an astonishing air-conditioned complex for a tiny town of four houses, one occupied by the school principal.

Tennis, squash and basketball courts at the centre are used by the school and families living in the surrounding agricultural district.

For only $7 (pick up the key at the Post Office Store up the road), travellers can pull up motor homes or caravans for the night and use the kitchen and showers.

I also found a full bottle of Carlton Dry beer at the campground but alas, unlike the full can of Tooheys New I picked up on the Dundee Beach near Darwin, the free beer was a little spoiled by the sun. I shall continue to keep my eyes open on the free beer treasure hunt around Australia.

How utterly hospitable is Cadoux, little pinprick on the map selected for a wheat railway siding in 1929.

It was originally called Cado after the man who owned the farm where the bulk storage depot was built. A smart clerk did some checking and found the man’s name was actually Donald Cadoux, a French Canadian.

Pronounced a la francaise, Cadoux is phonetically Cado, which explained the anomaly when the name was written down. The council spelling was changed and the locals tweaked the sound to suit their sturdy English heritage. Instead of being pronounced Cado, Cadoux is now pronounced Cadoo.

Poor Donald never had to endure his name being tortured. He was killed at Gallipoli.  

 Apart from its fine recreation centre, peaceful stopover and hospitality, Cadoux has its Post Office Store, a rural supplies store, service station and its primary school for 25 pupils drawn from the surrounding area.

And despite the dried golden landscape, the Wongan-Ballidu shire where the town nestles has never been declared drought-stricken.

You could say Monty Masefield was a pretty lucky fellow. In the end, he was the only one to benefit from a 10,000 pound water catchment built by the state government at mighty Beringbooding Rock.

For two years from 1937, 100 men on sustenance labour were railed from Perth to the tiny town of Bonnie Rock. From there they went to build a 2.3km concrete wall around the rim of Beringbooding.  to channel rainwater into a 2.2 million gallon water tank.

The struggling men building the tank and 40cm-to-50cm wall were teetering between the depression and the war. How many weeks work they had on the rock depended on how many children they had.

Beringbooding became the largest rock water catchment in Australia. Rainwater flowed into the tank but too late for 153 of 154 water clients the government had in 1935 in the Wialki and Bonnie Rock wheat farming districts.

All had depended to some extent (104 totally) on the government water supplies which failed in 1935, ’36 and finally in ’37, when the green light was given for the grey wall to curl around the top of the red rock. Rain fell and sloshed into the tank, war broke out and in 1941 Monty noted in lonely irony that he was the only settler left east of Yanoning Rock and the only one within 10 miles of Beringboodin’s grand catchment investment, worth about $12 million today.

Never mind. More farmers wandered back and the tank is still used for watering stock and spraying crops. From the top of the rock you have an excellent view of the way the tank roof is collapsing but  the foundations are sturdy and as a tourist attraction it is without peer.

We strolled the wall, admired the emerald and suspiciously stagnant Kangaroo Pool (above), tried to tumble the Balancing Rock and wondered at the men who travelled 400km, slept in tent shanties and cooked on open fires, mixing concrete on site to survive.

A source of wonder too was the geographic fart that shot massive, rounded lumps of red rock out of the flat landscape on the Wheatfield Way.

We had gone past the Rabbit Proof Fence turnoff to Beringbooding after exploring Elachbutting Rock, using camp amenities provided and maintained by the 400 community-minded townsfolk of Mukinbudin who reckon Elachbutting was better than Wave Rock. Famous Wave we had inspected on a previous visit to WA; Elachbutting we thought was as good in the wave department if they chopped out some of the scrub so you could get a better photo.

Elachbutting is far more interesting all round, more than 6km around the circumference with heaps of nooks and crannies, a Rainbow Wall and the main wave-like wall leading into Monty’s Pass, a 40m tunnel. Isabel ploughed up the 4wd track to the top, where we wandered the smooth expanse of granite, admired the view of the wheatfields, took funny photos of our shadows in the setting sun, had a cold beer when the sun went down and sipped a wine as the moon emerged.

We didn’t get to Eagle Rock or Monty’s aforementioned Yanoning Rock but we had been looking forward to the little town with the lovely name of Bonnie Rock. A wheat siding is nearby but sadly, no town.

Bonnie Rock township was surveyed into 32 blocks in 1932, a year after the railway reached it. It served wheatstack and construction workers. A couple of stores were thrown up, the Misses McInerney ran a boarding house and by the time a hall was built in 1935 almost half of the blocks had been sold.

Then is all went to custard. By 1944 the books showed only one ratepayer, the hall. Sadly, Bonnie Rock today consists of the hall (still in use), the railway siding and lots of signs saying what used to be there.

Sandalwood cutters who were in the district before the first train stopped gave Bonnie Rock its sweet name because they were smitten with a particularly fine rock they found. They must have taken it with them because it too seems to have disappeared.

Maybe Bonnie was a pretty pet rock, not a grand granite edifce such as Elachbutting or Beringbooding.

 

“Go to Mukinbudin,” said a Wongan Hills chap who wandered up at the seaside town of Guilderton. “It has a really great community feel.”

He was curious about Isabel; we were heading out into the wheat belt and wanted to know his suggestions. We had never heard of "Muckinboodin" but followed his advice and 300 km north-east of Perth we fell in love with the little town, its people, its caravan park and swimming pool complex a couple of blocks from the main street.

The rocks to rival Wave Rock were a bonus. So was Bill Crook, secretary of the Mukinbudin Community Workshop where retirees run a 1950s era wheat farming enterprise.

For $12 a night you can stay on an unpowered site in the caravan park ($25 for powered), get free entry into the newly refurbished Olympic pool right next door, use the freshly tiled shower and toilet ensuites and cook in the sparkling, well provisioned new camp kitchen.

A welcoming young couple, Luke and Tania Sprigg, manage the park and pool complex that would do any sizeable city proud. For a town of 400, it is superb – but that’s what you get when a state ploughs some of its mining profits back in communities under the “Royalties for Regions” program, aided by some state lottery funds.

We keep asking the question: “What happened to Queensland’s coal royalties?” Sadly, the regions saw precious little of that wealth that seems to have been spent on two decades of propaganda, public service growth and south-east corner indulgences.

Little Mukinbudin is a delight. The pub’s beer is cold. People are proud of their town and happy to let you know it. The spotless caravan park has neat cabins and four rustic converted railway barrack huts as well as the camping sites.

Luke and Tania are “Muka” farming folk, although they spent some time up north in Kununurra before the humidity drove them home. They are happy to raise their three young children in their home town, although Luke has a hankering to get back on the land and implement some innovative farming practices.

Looking into the past on farming instead of ahead is the Mukinbudin Community Workshop where a dozen retired blokes, some nearing 100, have preserved the past with restoration of machinery and preservation of the 60-year-old farming hub.

On the second day at the caravan park, 80-year-old Bill limped up to invite us to inspect the men’s shed opposite the pub where an assortment of retired Muka blokes restore old tractors, harvesters and farm machinery. They use it to plant and harvest crops (barley is being grown this year) on 300 acres of land just out of town.

Bill, friendly, charming and knowledgeable, is a driving force among the men, most in their 80s and a couple in their 90s. One 86-year-old bloke’s health was not so good but he didn’t want to stop his restoration work at the shed even though his wife worried about him being there sometimes on his own. Bill solved the problem by arranging for the machine under restoration to be taken to the yard of the restorer. He didn’t say what the wife thought of the solution.

WA’s state lotteries commission has funded the community workshop that is not only keeping a bunch of retired blokes happy and active as they painstakingly restore the old machinery, including the oldest working harvester in Australia. It is also preserving a working wheat harvesting heritage for Australia.

Seed is donated but fertiliser is not and at $1100 a tonne that can be a headache for the little groups’ finances.

Some of the machinery is housed inside the three bays of the shed, 120m by 15m-plus verandas. The rest is in the outside yard where Tony was delighted to find an old 22 Caterpillar crawler, the same as the first tractor he ever drove (above).

Bill knows his Muka farming stuff: his family has been around the area for 140 years. The land was opened for selection in 1910 and cleared with axes. Allocations were for 2000 acres but banks would not lend money unless farmers agreed to farm with a third in crop, a third fallow and a third in pasture.

Hay had to be put in first. “If you didn’t have enough feed for your 14 horses – that was the minimum you needed – then you weren’t in it,” says Bill firmly, pointing out a 110-year-old International harvester that needed five horses to pull it. Precious were the teams: a lead horse took five years to train.

Mukinbudin has lots more – like three huge rocks, one that is claimed to be better than Hyden’s Wave Rock and another that has the largest rock water catchment in Australia. But that’s another story.

Pierre shot Paddy but Mary (and the fickle wind) saved the Spaniards and the corn

Flames lit by a rebellious Aborigine swept down towards the first crop of corn grown by the Benedictine monks in the New Norcia commune in Western Australia.

Monks in their flapping robes tried to beat out the fire. If they lost the corn after a struggling start in the harsh Australian land, the whole settlement could be put in the too hard basket.

And the story of the two Spaniards, the Frenchman, the Englishman and the Irishman who trudged off into the bush in 1847 to create a Benedictine commune would have ended right there.

As the relentless flames seared on towards them, the monks had a brainstorm. They carried a revered painting of the Madonna from their rough chapel and stuck it between the corn and fire. Hallelujah. The wind changed direction, the monks sent thanks to The Lord and praises to Our Lady and the truculent Aborigine sitting on the hill said “Wow!”

Awed by the white magic, he promptly chummed up with the monks and persuaded other Aborigines to move into the mission to hear the word of God, learn new ways, gain an education and/or trade and generally enjoy life in the mission cottages.

The French monk accidentally shot the Irish catechist dead, had a breakdown and went back to Europe. The Englishman took up land so the two Spanish monks were left to pray and plough the commune vision into reality.

New Norcia flourished in Spanish-style grandeur in the Australian bush, thanks to a change of wind (or a miracle organised by Mother Mary) and the towering figure of Spanish priest Dom Salvado.

It became the only surviving monastic commune in Australia, exuding an air of tranquillity and incongruity as it straddles the Great Northern Highway in the peaceful wheat, hay and sheep pastoral belt 130 km north-west of Perth.

It’s an unlikely setting for dumb thieves to pull off Western Australia’s biggest art heist. Also surprising is its role in the Rosetta Mission space probe, which is being woken up to plunge into a comet. The European Space Agency leases a bit of New Norcia’s strategically positioned land for one of its Rosetta receptors.

Twenty-seven of the 69 buildings in the town are heritage-listed. The four boarding schools – primaries and colleges for boys and girls – have long closed after educating more than 10,000 scholars but have evolved in the last 10 years as a venue for Perth schools to hold live-in seminars. Music, art and history courses are popular, with about two schools a week bringing groups for intensive study.

Monk numbers have dwindled from a high of 80 to only nine, including a novice, we were told on the daily tour led by Jillian Passmore. The monastery is excluded from the tour but you can peer through the gates into the serene courtyard where live the Benedictines who pray seven times a day (you can join them in the church). They also observe silence from 8.15pm to 5.15am.

New Norcia’s story began when Dom Joseph Serra and Dom Rosendo Salvado, a pair of monks pushed out of Spain by religious disputes in 1835, found themselves on an odyssey from Italy. They sailed to Perth and, in company with a French monk, an Irish catechist and an English settler, trekked off into the bush to build a commune and educate, and save the souls of, the intimidating and suspicious Aborigines.

The five men were part of a grand dream to set up three Spanish Benedictine monasteries in WA. The ones in the north and south soon failed but the commune in the midlands battled onward as Christian soldiers do.

After the departure in different directions of the distraught mis-firing Frenchman, the deceased chanting Irishman and the land-seeking Englishman, life was tough for the two Spaniards despite two English Benedictines forsaking comfort to join them.

The local indigenous crew had come on board to live in the missionary cottages and help with the work but even the miraculous fire-stopper Mary painting failed in the conversion stakes. The monks were able to save few Christian souls.

Wrote Dom Salvado: “As I walked up and down the furrow, holding the plough tail in my hands, my bare feet trampled on the sharp roots and stones and alas, my bleeding feet, besides the sweat of my brow, watered the soil I was working up.”

Dom Serra, the first abbot, wasn’t that entranced with watering the soil with his sweating brow and bleeding feet. He found a lot to keep him in Perth and after 10 “troubled” years sailed back to Europe, which allowed the remarkable, indefatigable Dom Salvado to become abbot and set the commune on its way to becoming a healthy agricultural enterprise with 22,000 acres and an astonishing architectural legacy.

Even the first pig keeper’s house is deemed worthy of restoration, although the piggery itself was moved to the other side of town after prevailing winds disturbed the serenity of the graceful seclusion of the monastery enclave.

The monks raised animals, grew crops and produced flour, honey, olives, wine, bread and chocolate. Attempts to nurture carob trees for the chocolate failed: being spiritually removed from matters sexual the monks failed to check the gender of the trees. Only female trees were grown so they had to import beans but the single-sex tree grove does offer nice shade to tourists.

Treasures and memorabilia collected over almost 150 years, including precious paintings, chalices and relics (some sent by Queen Isabella of Spain) are on display in a museum and art gallery.  

In 1986 the art collection was targeted by masked thieves who bound and gagged the 61-year-old attendant, Connie McNaughton, and made off with paintings worth millions. The villains damaged the canvasses when they rolled them up so would have had trouble selling them on the black market.

They were quickly traced – a mould from a tyre on the car rented in their own names, a fingerprint in the gift shop – and the paintings were recovered as they were about to be sent to the Philippines. Restoration of the paintings cost a reported $200,000 before all but one – damaged beyond repair – were returned to the gallery by 2006.

In the last few years workplace health and safety, combined with diminished pairs of willing hands, has curbed production at the commune. Prudent as well as religious, the monks have licensed nearby enterprises to produce the New Norcia brand of popular jams, chutney, honey, olive oil and wine products.

A flour mill built in 1850 is the oldest surviving building and is unlocked for the tour but flour is now ground at the “new” mill, built in 1879. A traditional bakery still operates in New Norcia and all bread made in the town is sold in the town but the monks no longer knead the dough. The bakery and two more in Perth are run by a licensed operator.

Baked daily, the bread is simply heavenly.

New Norcia was named after the birthplace of St Benedict. In Italy the word is pronounced Nor-cheea but the Aussie version is Nausea. As Benedictines, the monks were autonomous from Rome and monks did not have to be Catholics. Nearly all are however, drawn to the Benedictine order’s values of spirituality, hospitality and humble work. It’s not all austerity: they are allowed two and half glasses of rose a day under St Benedict’s rules.

Abbot Salvado not only had extraordinary vision, leadership, determination, charm and a great capacity for toil in arduous circumstances. He was also a brilliant musician and a lateral thinker. When the commune ran short of funds after some tough years, he rustled up some cash by walking to Perth and putting on a piano concert. Citizens readily bought tickets to hear the Spanish monk play and the commune survived once again.

Dom Salvado also made regular fund-raising trips back to Europe. He died on a trip to Rome in 1900, aged 89. His death caused great distress in the Aborigine community. His body was brought back to New Norcia and lies beneath a vault in the church.

New Norcia’s first four abbots were Spanish. The last Spanish-born monk there died in 2000, aged nearly 100.

One can get to meet a monk on Saturday afternoon but we were lucky enough to have a quick chat with the novice as we wandered around the town in the cool of the early morning – not too early, though. It was after 5.15am so Dom Robert Nixon was happy to have a friendly chat.

He was unlocking buildings ready for the day’s influx of workers, worshippers and tourists. A former priest in Mt Isa, he was drawn to New Norcia by its spirituality. He brings a great talent to the town: he can play the organ. We wondered how many more novices are likely to follow.

New Norcia’s current monks will keep the town alive for a few decades but peeling plaster and crumbling walls testify to the fading of a way of life. Tourism only pays its own way. Agriculture and school seminars bring in some money and an architectural legacy like New Norcia will always find devotees and heritage foundations prepared to pitch in with funds to save a unique Australian town. It is a treasure beyond price: let’s pray the monastic treasury is in good shape.