On The Road Again (And A Lizard Joins Us At Dinner)

Coorow, tiny town about 3 hours north of Perth, WA, 19 October, 2025

Man removing lizard from under our table

This weekend we are back on the road, albeit more briefly than before!

Mark drove the van up to Geraldton last Wednesday to be part of an Emerging Songwriter workshop. The workshop culminated in the winning songwriter performing at the Chapman Music country music festival. So after my work week finished, and after swimming on Saturday morning, I flew up to join him.

We had a day and night at the festival. Mark didn’t win but in my (not-at-all biased) view, he should have! The guy who won was great singer but only has written one song, and actually did covers for his performance. It would have made sense to give him a 'performer' award, but not a songwriter award. Anyway, this is meant to be Mark's next and more relaxed career so I should not be focusing on winning awards :-)

Mark and the other songwriters performing the sing they jointly wrote on stage

There were about 600 people at the festival, mostly grey nomads, with most folks camping in the showgrounds where the festival was on. There were lots of performers that went late into the night but Mark and I, in our usual style, went back quite early to our van and watched a movie! Mark was pretty exhausted so was keen to chill. After the movie I propped open the window and listened to the final festival performers until the music ended. Very comfortable way to participate in a concert, from a campervan bed!

This morning, Sunday, Mark cooked breakfast and then we meandered through the wheat-growing countryside. We are heading back to Perth via an inland route in the hope of wildflowers. Its very late in the season but there are still so many beautiful bushes and flowers!! (A tiny sample below and more at the bottom of this page). Where we are driving is the absolute heart of wildflowers in WA. Next year will come here a month or so earlier....

Re-living our holiday!

We had lunch in Mingenew, a place famous for the largest grain bins in WA. Lunch came after a long call to Melissa who is convinced she is going to prison for tax fraud. Its all to do with the way her boss has been employing her and is in fact is the person doing the wrong thing tax wise. But, as we tried to explain to Melissa, her obsession with going to prison is really a reflection of her broader anxiety as she now has three jobs, is studying 2 units, and has a boyfriend. She is just totally overwhelmed. The usual clue to this state is that her room in absolute chaos, as is everywhere she goes in the house. As a consequence, we've pretty much forced her to quit the job with the dodgy boss. When that finishes up next week, we are hoping her anxiety level will go down and she can get back on top of her life.

After Mingenew we enjoyed the back country roads, with a weird detour to a "wildflower tracking station". We thought it was going to some sort of wildflower analysis that might inform us where to find particular flowers. But it turned out to be an actual real space tracking station, with the word 'wildflower' in front of the name on the sign just indicating there were flowers enroute (which indeed there were). Very strange to find space satellites out in the middle of nowhere!

We went past pink lakes, a "big tractor", and a few small towns. We visited the Coorow Community Farm and walked to the lookout. Now we are settled in the local Caravan Park. We will ride our bikes into the pub for dinner tonight.

Alas, back to Perth - and work - tomorrow :-(

It has been so lovely being back on the road!

PS we had dinner at the pub and as you can see a bobtail lizard joined us! Our meals had just arrived and someone at the nearby table said to me “there’s a shingle back lizard just near your leg” and sure enough there was! I quickly and smoothly got up - and a big man came over and just as quickly and smoothly picked it up and took it outside!!