The Chimes

100th Anniversary of the Moser Organ Celebration

The organ had been purchased by the then organist, Fr. Stephen Moreno OSB under the authority of the third abbot Anselmo Catalán. It was under construction for five months in 1923, under the direction of Moreno with assistance from members of the community.

The concert programme honoured the long tradition of fine musician composers at New Norcia from our founding abbot Rosendo Salvado right up our current liturgist, Fr. Robert Nixon.

Patrick Elms delivered a very comprehensive and engrossing description of the organ from his perspective of having maintained this beautiful instrument for so many years, ably assisted by John Beaverstock at the keyboard, demonstrating the many voices and features of the organ.

The 70 attendees were treated to an excellent smorgasbord luncheon in the two newly renovated dining rooms of St Ildephonsus’ college.

The Abbot’s Table – Winter 2023

It is not uncommon for the Abbot to ask himself (out loud) “what was I thinking?” when it comes to the long preparation process for these dinners, resulting from his menu selections.

For this Abbot’s Table, that question centred around the entrée where there was a lot of preparation and fiddly assembly work with the spring rolls and ravioli.

Above, Abbot John is pictured rolling his pasta dough and assembling the ravioli.
If you look carefully at the photo, you will see that the Abbot was working so fast that his hand fell off!!

Just joking.

The entrée was worth all the hard work.

Geraldton Probus Club Visit

Guests started the afternoon with a look through the Museum and Art Gallery, followed by pre-dinner drinks in the Hostel bar and a Monastery dinner in the Hostel dining room. Guests concluded the night with a cake and champagne to celebrate one of the member’s birthday.

On Wednesday morning, after breakfast, the group enjoyed a two hour private town tour before their departure.

Guests said that the overnight stay exceeded their expectations, the hospitality, open fireplace, venue, meals and friendly staff made for one of the better outings they have had in a long time.

Upgrading Access

The old blacksmith’s shop.

Over the last few weeks, we have been moving more of our large artefact displays into the old flour mill, blacksmith’s shop and olive shed, ready to open these three new displays.

The old blacksmith’s shed needed the entrance way upgraded so, between local contractor Scott Metcalf and Moora BGC, a new entrance path was laid.

The monastery guesthouse.

Concreting the new access pathway from the bottom of the oratory steps to the kitchen was a far more difficult job, on several fronts. The only access for the BGC truck was the road below the lower guesthouse so all the concrete had to be barrowed uphill by the grounds and maintenance crew, Ian, Shady, Alex and Chris. Scott then had the additional complication of laying the concrete downhill, rather than uphill. After a few hours the team completed the task and the monastery guests are now much safer as they traverse uphill from prayers, particularly when it is dark.

Below L-R: Ian, Alex and Chris take their turn on the barrow.

An appreciation of our volunteers Part 1: The Archives

Without our volunteers, our work would have been immeasurably more difficult and protracted and some of the grand visions for projects that we aspire to, and have aspired to, would never have materialised without their help. In many instances, volunteers have simply shared the workload of the various managers in the past, performing routine tasks such as shelving books in the Library, helping move artefacts and vestments in the Collections area or scanning the seemingly endless documents, maps, plans and photographs that are to be found in Archives. Other volunteers have brought specialist skills to New Norcia such as a proficiency in another language to Archives, professional cataloguing skills to the Library or previous museum experience and valuation expertise to Collections.

I should like to start our appreciation of volunteers with the Archives for two reasons: firstly, it begins with an A! (as in ACL) and secondly, as archivist, I have enjoyed their company most over the last sixteen years. Among our earliest volunteers, all those years ago, were Barbara Young and her husband Mike Keenan (who volunteered in Grounds) and Christine Dale. Barbara was one of the earliest to work on the photographs whilst Chris created a Salvado education resource for the (then) Education Centre. Others that followed were Michelle Levings, an archives student at Curtin on work experience, Lillian Bellandi and Diana Davies (also photographs).

Transcription of chronicles is still a very important facet of archival work and we are grateful to Larrie Strautmanis (a retired Adelaide lawyer) and Rob Hart for their early work on the later English language monastery chronicles and to Patricia Fuster for continuing the projects, though Patricia is both transcribing and translating the Spanish language chronicles but from Argentina! Another overseas volunteer, Sonsoles Lopez from Colombia, volunteered at New Norcia too and was very much appreciated for her translation work on the Spanish letters.

We seem to have been blessed with international visitors for, in 2012 and again a year or so later, I was indeed fortunate to have Leen Charles as my locum archivist when I was off work for health reasons. Leen was the former City Archivist for Ghent in Belgium who ran our archives like clockwork while I was absent – a true godsend! Her partner, Marjan, did a brilliant job too, volunteering for the Education Centre.

More recently we have had longer term volunteers such as Andrew Walton who sorted the archives’ extensive map collection as part of an Abbot Placid Scholarship. Two long-term volunteers I would like to mention especially are Geraldine Byrne who spent eleven years analysing some 20,000 photographs and adding tags to them on their digital reverse – a fantastic accomplishment which has proven so useful in so many ways. And Christine Choo who, over ten years, built up a family tree database of over 2,500 names from New Norcia’s records so that we now possess a very powerful tool for family history research, particularly for Aboriginal families.

Lastly, chronologically speaking, but by no means least, are Vida Whale and Jim Longbottom, both of whom volunteered not only in Archives but also Collections (Vida) and the Library (Jim). Vida was with us for three years during which time she scanned all the Salvado correspondence collection which amounts to thousands of letters, many of the Salvado era registers, finalised the sorting of the photographs and, amongst other things, wrote an instruction manual for the overhead A3 scanner we procured for all those Salvado era registers.

Jim has been with us for three years now, mainly in the library and grounds but also, on occasion, in the archives where he has proved to be a skilled and accomplished photographer, recording both artworks and maps and plans.

In the second part, we will pay tribute to the volunteers who have contributed so generously to the other areas of ACL – Museum Collections and the Library.

Peter Hocking
Archivist

Digitising the Archives

It is quite clear from the 1905 image of Torres’ design of the façade of St Ildephonsus College why we need to be about the work of digitising such precious images. This image has been hermetically encapsulated, but the decay of time is eminently apparent.

In recent months we have been capturing our collection of plans (as distinct from maps) and to date some 760 of them have been photographed and processed. (about halfway)

In the process certain images do cause delight and amusement. Here are a couple of playful images from the pen of a graphic artist from an architectural firm. I just love the rabbits!

Welcome Old Friends

They brought with them two German priests, Fr Thomas (a relative) and Fr Christian, who are enjoying a holiday down under.

On the journey from Perth to New Norcia, they were struck by the Australian landscape, the luscious crops, and the intensity of the blue sky.

After enjoying the treasures of the museum and art gallery, we were pleased to have them join us for Midday Prayer in the oratory and lunch in the refectory.

Abbot John treated them to a short tour of the monastery, including the hall, library, archives, Spanish chapel and the bakery, still warm from the daily bake.

If it’s not the roof...it’s the boiler!

Lead by property manager Ian Smith, our skilled grounds and maintenance team, and often times the expertise if specialist contractors, all manner of jobs are undertaken to keep the place ticking. Pictured: in-house scaffolding has been assembled to repair the boiler servicing the cells of two monks, the abbot’s suite, and the bishop’s room, presently occupied by retreat master Fr Bede.

Upcoming Events

Fr Robert Nixon, OSB Live at Fremantle Basilica

Friday, 27th October 2023

Performing original compositions from his new album Celestial Void, as well as beloved works of Chopin and Liszt.

Click here for more information.

Treasuries of Ragtime Piano

16 DECEMBER 2023 NEW NORCIA HOSTEL

This soirée will present an array of ragtime music (including pieces by Winifred Atwell, Scott Joplin and many others), performed by New Norcia's Fr Robert Nixon.

Click here for information and tickets.