TRAVEL FEATURE - A u s t r a l i a
MEGAN GOVERNI
THE
HELL ROAD
TO HEAVEN
Bloody hell ! Looking across at
my partner I saw him cross himself , all this time together and I hadn ’ t realised he was
Catholic .
Covered in red dust we stood in front of the most perfectly white church you could ever imagine . The road up into the Dampier Peninsula , the Cape Leveque Road had been hellish , a 120-kilometre ride into the unknown that for the most part resembled a dusty skateboard halfpipe .
Perhaps I understood why the sign of the cross had been made . Perhaps it was just out of awe for the impressive structure in front of us . Perfectly white , pointing to the heavens , out of place in this remote Aboriginal community .
We stood in front of the Sacred Heart Church , the focal point for the Beagle Bay community , the white contrasting the blue sky and red earth . The area known as Ngariun
Burr to the local Nyul Nyul people had been named Beagle Bay in 1838 by Captain John Clements Wickham as he surveyed the north coast of Western Australia in his ship the HMS Beagle , a ship made famous for one of its former passengers , Charles Darwin .
An interesting merge of cultures arose from interaction with European missionaries , first French Trappist monks sought to tempt the Aboriginal people into a life of Christianity through the monastic teachings . It lasted just a few years , the Trappists left and Pallottine missionaries from Germany moved in as did nuns from Ireland .
Wooden constructions lasted as long as the Trappists ; termites , storms and fires all sought to destroy the settlement . Yet , when all German Australians were interned at Beagle Bay during World War 1 the need for a more solid and prominent construction was needed .
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