On the verge outside Proclamation House are two native peppermint trees, their weeping foliage and sapling trunks framing the home’s façade. So far, so typical in a Western Australia area where, in the mid-19th century, green-thumbed Benedictine monks established a monastery on the land and waterways of the indigenous Whadjuk Noongar people and, calling the area New Subiaco (after the Italian town of Subiaco, the birthplace of the Benedictine order), they lovingly tended to the terrain, planting orchards and olive trees. The vegetation of ‘Subi’ – as the locals affectionately call it – is still revered for its thriving, leafy streetscapes.
