15 May 2013 - Belair Gardens Caravan Park, Geraldton, Western Australia

Today we took advantage of the clear skies and headed east to explore the north west wheatbelt, a part of the state that is easily missed if one travels down the coast highway.

Mullewa is ninety seven kilometres east north-east of Geraldton, best known for its wild flowers in the spring. Again we have mis-timed our own exploration of the region, however places have many faces, a different one for each season, and it is as if we are seeing towns and country without their makeup. However we would have to say that it would indeed be a delight to re-do today’s trip at the right time of the year and then we would probably have the caravan in tow and stay in Mullewa for a day or three.

Apart from the seasonal floral show, Mullewa is the service centre, of just eight hundred people, 60% of whom live in the town, for the cereal crop growers and the iron ore which is carried through via rail and road from Tallering Peak sixty five kilometres away.

On arrival at Mullewa, we headed up to the lookout and were treated to a wonderful array of interpretative panels about the history of the town, how European settlement began when pastoralists arrived in 1869 to take up leases, how in 1894 the rail from Geraldton reached the town in the same year the town was gazetted and the problems with water or the lack of. Returning to the main road, we had to wait for a train which had stopped right across the crossing, waiting for a worker to come and change the points by hand. I thought this was all done electronic nowadays? We counted thirty eight wagons, all branded with the CBH Group, which we subsequently learned was the logo for a wheat syndicate.

We drove up and down the street and then around to the Church of Our Lady of Mt Carmel, one of the many churches and other buildings designed by Monsignor John C Hawes, Mullewa’s first priest. His story is wonderfully interesting and the town has seized the opportunity to adopt it as his own.

In a nutshell, John Cyril Hawes was born in 1876 near London in England, trained  and worked as an architect, before being called to the ministry. He entered Lincoln Theological College and was ordained as an Anglican priest in 1903 in London where he worked among the poor.

Church of Our Lady of Mt Carmel

In 1909 he was invited to join a mission in Barbados where many churches had been damaged by a hurricane. There he ministered to his native parishioners, repaired churches and designed and built St Pauls in Clarence Town. A couple of years later he converted to Catholicism, then roamed and worked mainly in Canada, looking for direction in life. Then in 1913 he entered The Beda College in Rome and was ordained priest two years later. It was in Rome he met Bishop Kelly from Western Australia and was recruited for the Geraldton diocese, where he was able to pursue his two passions: as outback missionary work and architect with a commission to design a cathedral. It is this cathedral, here in Geraldton, we hope to visit tomorrow morning. I am looking forward to that.

He is responsible for many other buildings in Western Australia, including churches in Carnarvon and Northampton which we missed as we passed through.

In 1939 he returned to Barbados where he built a hermitage on Cat Island and attempted to live as a hermit under the name of Brother Jerome. However he ended up spending most of his time designing churches and supervising building there and in Nassau. Finally worn out through hard work and a severe life, he was carted off to hospital in Florida where he eventually died just short of eighty years old. He was buried in a cave on Cat Island as per his instructions.

A large nutshell I am afraid, but I did find his life story, which is told in far greater detail along the 590 metre Monsignor Hawes Heritage Walk, very interesting.

Mullewa was very quiet today, just a dozen or so young aborigine people walking about pushing pushchairs along the very tidy paths through the attractive parks, resplendent in colour; the bougainvillea and roses blooming. Wild flowers were not required.

The town is bending over backward to attract tourists and has worked very hard to provide facilities and information. We hope the folk flock in the spring, stay and spend a penny or more, to reward all the hard work that has been done.

We sat in the landcruiser out of the breeze eating our lunch in the park, then headed south toward Mingenew, across wide open fields of recently harvested wheat. Forty or so kilometres south, we gave the Coalseam Conservation Park a miss; it is best visited in the spring. Instead we headed west toward Walkaway / Greenough, soon passing the Mungarra Gas Turbine Station and arriving at the Alinta Wind Farm, the largest in Western Australia with fifty four turbines. The operation supplies Perth and the south west interconnected system.

Greenhough's Historic Settlement

From here it was a short drive down to Walkaway, a small settlement, which together with Greenough just a few kilometres away, combines with Geraldton to make up that population figure I quoted of 33,000.  In 1857 the first of the European settlors moved into the wide valley that lies between the sand dunes and the hills which now support those many wind turbines. There is lovely pastoral land through here, today grazing a few cattle and more sheep, along with the alpacas at the Historic Settlement. During the 1860s Greenough became a thriving agricultural area but the threat of rust on the wheat crops combined with drought, flood and poor prices for agriculatural products led to the areas decline. Now the main industry is tourism, including a wildlife centre we did not visit, the award winning Central Greenough Historic Settlement, now heritage listed which we did  and enjoy enormously and the Leaning Tree, one of the many Eucalyptus camaldulensis trees bent by the prevailing strong and salt laden winds of the area.

The Leaning Tree

From here it was just twenty seven kilometres north, back to Geraldton and camp for our last night in this surprisingly interesting town.