Thursday, 1st June 2023
New Norcia Achieves Bronze!
New Norcia placed third in the 2023 Tiny Tourism Town Awards, receiving a Bronze medal at the 2023 Perth Airport WA Regional Tourism Conference Dinner in Kalgoorlie-Boulder on 16 May. Directors of Visitors Services and Groups, Carmel Murray and Joyce McKee accepted the award on behalf of the monks and staff, all who contribute to making New Norcia the great destination it is!
Joyce and Carmel attended many sessions during the two-day conference, including the Visitor Centres WA Meeting, where they were asked what they thought was important for visitor centres going forward and any concerns they had. This provided our tourism team with ample ideas for moving forward and improving visitor services at New Norcia.
Here is their report of conference events:
Following the visitor centres meeting, after a quick lunch, we moved onto the main conference sessions. We heard from a variety of speakers including Evan Hall, Tourism Council WA CEO, the Major of Kalgoorlie-Boulder, Patrick Hill, Outback Highway Development Council Chairman, about creating “Australia’s Longest Shortcut” from the goldfields of WA to QLD – turning the road from gravel to bitumen and what this will do for tourism along this long stretch of road. We also heard from Tim Moore, Kalgoorlie’s Archives Officer about the history of the Goldfields and watched an amazing video of people living and working in the goldfields many years ago. We also heard from Sue Hanson about Goldfields Aboriginal Cultural Tourism about the naming of places with traditional names, how they are setting up local Aboriginal businesses along tourists routes, etc.
Edie Ulrich and her son Danny Ulrich also gave a talk about their tours – Goldfields Honey Ant Tours. Edie and her son are indigenous and they take tour groups out to the desert to hunt for honey ants in the traditional way – digging holes in the ground – they showed a video and it looks like a lot of fun. We spoke to Edie during the lunchbreak and she was a very friendly, lovely lady.
The day concluded with an evening Welcome Function at the Museum of the Goldfields.
On Tuesday we heard from various speakers about how tourism is going in WA following COVID, industry trends and what the vision is for the next 10 years, jobs in tourism, etc. We also heard from General Manager of Mandurah’s Visitors Centre about the process to bring the Giants of Mandurah to Mandurah, all the planning, consultation and building and then the devastating arson attack on one of the Giants. Mandurah has been announced as the venue for the 2024 WA Regional Tourism Conference.
We also heard from Hon Roger Cook MLA, Deputy Premier and Minister for Tourism in WA.
Tuesday concluded with a dinner and awards night at the Mining Hall of Fame – a fun night!
