New Norcia

About

New Norcia ( NOR-see-ə) is a town in Western Australia, 132 kilometres (82 mi) north of Perth, near the Great Northern Highway. It is situated next to the banks of the Moore River, in the Shire of Victoria Plains. New Norcia is the only monastic town in Australia, with its Benedictine abbey founded in 1848. The monks later founded a mission and schools for Aboriginal children. A series of Catholic colleges were created, with the school that became St Benedict's College in 1965 later gaining notoriety for being the site of sexual abuse that took place in the late 1960s and 1970s. The town has many heritage sites and places of interest. New Norcia Station, a ground station for the European Space Agency is located 8 kilometres (5 mi) south of the town. Since a road bypass was complete in 2017, heavy traffic bypasses the town.

On 1 March 1846, a Benedictine mission to the local Yued Aboriginal people was started about 8 kilometres (5 mi) to the north, led by Spanish Benedictine monks Giuseppe Serra and Rosendo Salvado. Within a year the mission was moved to where the town is today, and on 1 March 1847 the foundation stone of the monastery was laid.

The place was named New Norcia after Norcia in Italy, the birthplace of St Benedict, home to the Monastery of Saint Benedict. Unlike the Italian town, which is pronounced [ˈnɔrtʃa] (approximately / ˈ n ɔːr tʃ ə / NOR -chə ), New Norcia is pronounced / ˈ n ɔːr s i ə / NOR -see-ə.

A significant diversion of the Great Northern Highway completed in 2017, known as the New Norcia Bypass, diverts heavy traffic away from the buildings and town.

The abbey was founded by two Spanish Benedictine monks, Giuseppe Serra and Rosendo Salvado on 1 March 1847. After two years spent among the local Aboriginal people, Serra and Salvado came to the conclusion that they could be more easily converted by establishing a mission rather than following them on their journeys. Salvado was appointed the first abbot of New Norcia on 12 March 1867.

In 1886, 5,300 hectares (13,000 acres) of land was leased to Salvado, in order to fulfil his aim of encouraging local Aboriginal people to settle there, become farmers, and eventually own the land – on which they had lived and for which they had cared for over 40 millennia). However, after Salvado's death, the new abbot, Fulgentius Torres, turned the focus of the mission away from Aboriginal children, and was more concerned with educating the children of Catholic settlers. In 1949, the Benedictines applied to the government to purchase the land, which the government eventually permitted, despite other competing interests, in order to honour the 1886 agreement with the monks. However, the agreement did not include any ongoing obligation on the part of the Benedictines to ensure that Aboriginal people could use and benefit from the land.

- 12 March 1867 ( 1867-03-12 ) – 29 December 1900 ( 1900-12-29 ) : Rosendo Salvado – died as abbot, aged 86 years

- 1902 ( 1902 ) – 6 October 1914 ( 1914-10-06 ) : Fulgentius Torres – died as abbot, aged 53 years

- 1915 ( 1915 ) – 1951 ( 1951 ) : Anselm Catalán – resigned died 29 July 1959, aged 80 years

- 1951 ( 1951 ) – 1971 ( 1971 ) : Gregory Gómez – resigned, died 31 May 1995, aged 91 years

- 31 March 1974 ( 1974-03-31 ) – 15 June 1980 ( 1980-06-15 ) : Bernard Rooney – resigned

- 1983 ( 1983 ) – 1997 ( 1997 ) : (Placid Spearritt) – appointed apostolic administrator of the community

- 29 January 1997 ( 1997-01-29 ) – 4 October 2008 ( 2008-10-04 ) : Placid Spearritt – died as abbot, aged 75 years

- 23 January 2009 ( 2009-01-23 ) – present [ as of? ] : John Herbert

There were also two institutions for Aboriginal children: St Mary's (for boys) and St Joseph's (for girls), collectively known as New Norcia Mission. When it was operating the New Norcia Misson was a part of the Stolen Generations with Indigenous children being sent to the mission after being forcibly removed from their families.

The children were taught mainly practical skills, and after leaving school they often worked at the Mission. The New Norcia Mission was scheduled under the Industrial Schools Act 1874, meaning that the abbot had "complete control" over the children living there. Both schools closed in 1974.

St Mary's Mission, also known as St Mary's College, was founded in 1848 as a boarding school for Aboriginal boys. Some boys, including wards of state in the 1960s, were place there by the state government. In his 2021 autobiographical book God, the Devil and Me, Alf Taylor (1945–2023) recounts the horrific verbal and physical abuse meted out to Aboriginal boys living in the mission by the brothers and nuns during the 1950s and 1960s. The book was short-listed for the 2022 New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards, Indigenous Writers' Prize.

St Joseph's Native School and Orphanage was founded in 1861 by the monks. Benedictine Missionary Sisters sent from Spain took over in 1904 and ran it until its closure in 1974. Aboriginal girls and young women lived and attended school there, sometimes sent by their families, and sometimes placed there as government policy if they were children of single mothers. This policy was a part of the Stolen Generations. The school and orphanage were rebuilt in 1909. There were stories of physical and emotional abuse of the girls at St Joseph's.

The monks Latinised the children's Aboriginal names, making it hard to trace who they were later. From the time of Abbot Fulgentius Torres onwards, the focus changed and tensions arose in how the "orphanages" were being run. Adults were prevented from visiting their children, and in 1907 an incident occurred in which 32 Aboriginal fathers were arrested by police when they tried to storm the mission to see their children.

In 2001 there was a reunion of former residents of New Norcia Mission.