YOU know the sign. Anyone returning from Gloucester travelling south will have at one time or another spied the sign by the roadside on entering Stroud.
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It's the Old Stroud Monastery sign and it's a Hunter Valley landmark.
Motorists, often from Sydney, pass it all the time and ask themselves, "I wonder what that's about?" But usually, being in a hurry, the visitors rarely stop to satisfy their curiosity.
Maybe they should. It's been described as an oasis of calm, a serene bush retreat and now available to rent to big and small groups, for retreats, conferences (including yoga) and workshops.
One of the buildings is even labelled "Gunya Chiara", meaning "house of healing".
This 'unknown' site, with a history stretching back almost 44 years, has also been called unique in Australia because of its background.
The site is special in this part of the Hunter Valley because it started as a remarkable project involving a remarkable woman who happened to be a nun.
In the late 1970s, volunteers from all walks of life and from all over Australia descended on Stroud at weekends over two years. There they proudly became known as "The Muddies". A reunion on site was then finally held n 2013.
After all, it's not every day you wander around in gum boots building a monastery out of puddled mud, creating mud brick structures including a chapel. On a good day, up to 400 mud bricks were made on site.
The land was consecrated and the buildings blessed and dedicated on July 12, 1980.
A later map appears to show about 27 dwellings, both big and very small, on the land.
Never heard of the Old Monastery? Well, that's understandable, I suppose, as the driving force behind the ambitious project is long gone, having died in America 22 years ago.
Maitland-born, in her earlier life she was the renowned Australian sculptor Wendy Solling. These days though she is better known as the charismatic and exuberant Sister Angela of Stroud.
Sister Angela (1926-2002) was an Anglican Franciscan nun and one of the earliest women ordained into the Anglican Church in Australia.
It was also rumoured she had wanted to create a female university at Stroud at some stage.
She had certainly always wanted writers and theologians, artists and students to spend time in Stroud to study and work "and to join in the rhythm of prayer and worship".
She saw herself as a visionary, but admitted she found administration details "tiresome and frustrating". But no-one is perfect I guess, especially when building a mudbrick monastery from scratch.
Years after, Sister Angela told a documentary maker she saw the Stroud Monastery as a "giant sculpture".
"In a way the whole building (project including a refectory) was a sculpture out of nothing, out of the earth," she said.
For at the heart of it, Sister Angela (Wendy Solling) saw herself really as an artist who happened to be religious. She also continued small sculpture projects to keep a balance in her life.
Much later, Erina author Faith Reid spent several years interviewing and writing up notes and tape recordings of Sister Angela to produce an autobiography in 2011 called Sculptor Of Spirit: Angela of Stroud.
"My initial impression of her (in 1980) was a dramatic figure riding high on a tractor with brown robes flying everywhere, heading straight towards me," the self-confessed "monastery muddy" revealed.
Chopping vegetables (the nuns were vegetarians), shopping and many deep spiritual conversations and experiences followed. They then wrote a booklet together to help cancer sufferers, titled I Too Have Cancer.
Also in Reid's book, eminent Australia sculptor Tom Bass recalled her with affection, speaking about her love of life and great sense of humour.
Bass wrote that the young sculptor Wendy, as he first knew her in Sydney, looked as though she had ridden her horse down from the Hunter Valley and was still wearing her jodhpurs and carrying her riding crop.
"She was a goer, and a doer and that never left her," Bass said, recalling how countless others later visited the monastery to be greeted by her embrace and a throaty "hello, darling".
She was a goer, and a doer and that never left her.
- Australia sculptor Tom Bass
The Stroud story started when Sister Angela and two others from the Sisters of St Clare enclosed order arrived in Australia by boat from Freeland, Oxfordshire, in England at the invitation of the Bishop of Newcastle Ian Shevill in the early 1970s.
They were accommodated initially at St Johns Rectory in Stroud but, despite tremendous help from the local people, funds were tight. Discarded wooden timber boxes from the supermarket were needed to make furniture.
As their numbers of nuns grew, the need for more accommodation arose. Land nearby was bought. Finally, the Monastery of the Blessed Virgin Mary and a building known as The Hermitage also emerged, all overseen by Sister Angela.
She herself became ill and finally moved to America where she died in January 2002. She was 75.
By the year 2000, there were no more Sisters of St Clare occupying the monastery. The dream had lasted 20 years.
Sister Angela was the sole remaining sister. She might have been ahead of her time, but the stress of running the monastery and a fire there took its toll, and she left.
The Friends of the Monastery group and a management committee was then formed.
Anglican Franciscan brothers are now caretakers of the property welcoming guests seeking solitude and peace in the beautiful bush setting behind Stroud Country Club's golf course.
A Newcastle businessman with close ties to the original project later gave Weekender another view, however, of the old Stroud Monastery scheme.
While Sister Angela "inspired people", he felt she was "terribly flawed" and there were mixed opinions on her legacy. For example, he believed the ongoing efforts of certain individuals involved may not have been fully appreciated.
"All the nuns finally left. Their personal project collapsed. It was all very sad," he said.
"Some people today might think the monastery was built by Sister Angela alone, but it was a labour of love by many volunteers and the sisters.
"Many clergy, trainees, third order Franciscans and local people contributed. Bishop Garry Weatherill as a young man was one of them," he said.
"One thing that tickled my fancy was when one particular donation came to the Monastery of the BVM (the Blessed Virgin Mary) to help the project.
"The cheque arrived (with wrongly abbreviated wording) reading 'Pay the Monster BUM'."
And there's an odd epitaph to the tale. Before Sister Angela became a nun, as Australian sculptor Wendy Solling she'd made a bust of famous Danish fairy tale author Hans Christian Andersen which the Danish community of NSW donated to the City of Sydney in 1955 to mark the 150th anniversary of his birth.
When plans were then made to relocate it to Wynyard Park in 1984 it was missing. Despite a world-wide search, it has never been found.
A replica bronze bust of Andersen was then made and this was finally unveiled by HRH Prince Frederik of Denmark and Princess Mary in 2005 to celebrate the bicentenary of the dreamer's birth.
