We’ve enjoyed our stay here in Dandaragan. The Transit Park lives up to the hype on WikiCamps, with good toilets and hot showers, a domestic washing machine in the laundry and concrete pads with hookups. There has been one other person staying here as well.

The drive here was very pretty once we crossed the Brand Highway and there was a little picnic place with a wonderful view over fields of canola.

The farms have quite a lot of trees on them and when we were speaking with the store owner on our evening walk he said that the farms had started out being livestock only, then switching to crops, which perhaps explains why so many tress were left standing.

For $20 per night this is hard to beat. It attracts people to this tiny hamlet of about 100 people who might otherwise not come here even in the wildflower season.

We walked down the Main Street in the evening, noting the attractive primary school, historic post office building and General Store and little church that was originally built as a school/church combined. It is made of soapstone quarried locally.

The monthly Anglican service happened this morning, and we decided, with less than an hour for getting ready, to go along. The service was lovely, traditional, run by two priests who are husband and wife and who work at a number of churches in the area.

Afterwards we chatted with local people over morning tea and accepted a gift of a dozen eggs and a lift back to the caravan park. We have also been loaned a book of humorous poems on caravanning which we will drop off to a different person on our way out of town. Our impression of the locals as being friendly, from our discussion with the store owner, has proved true.

There is a local fair happening next weekend and we would like to be able to return here, but we probably have too much happening at home.

There was an organist playing for the hymns and he is a teacher at the Moora School of Music. He was asking for teachers as he said the school is proving very popular at the moment. It highlights that we here in WA are able to live fairly normal lives, whilst keeping the border closed. Even the Prime Minister seems persuaded that our state is making pots of money for the commonwealth through mining and as we don’t have large populations near the border it doesn’t inconvenience people too much. McGowan has the support of an overwhelming majority of West Australians even though there are some people complaining because it impacts on them personally.

We met some alpacas near the church and this baby would only look at us over his mum’s back.

We prayed for rain in church this morning and now feel invested in this local area getting enough rain to help the crops. It feels like it will rain, with heavy clouds and the wind increasing.

This morning after church we brought in the washing, then I made a pot of coffee in the percolator and settled down to write this blog. I feel it is a connection with my mother as she used to have coffee made in a similar percolator with the glass knob on top where you see the water gradually change in colour as it perks. Amazing for $10 from the opp shop near the bookshop where Eversley volunteers. It allows me to use the good coffee beans from Antz and tastes the same as coffee made in an Italian moka pot. What’s more, it works on the inverter when we are relying on battery power.