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Need to blog about the weekend. I was actually doing a Youtube video, but I’m not very happy about the video from my iPhone, probably due to automatic HDR, and I find it annoying. It’s now switched off, but it was a bit late for good quality video.

However, we set off on Friday in the late morning and made a first stop at Serpentine near the roadhouse for lunch. Their toasted sandwiches are pretty good. We arrived in Dwellinup at about 2.00 p.m., or perhaps even earlier, but waited in town until about 10 to 5.00 pm as the organisers had asked us to NOT arrive early as we clog up the road waiting in line. It was fairly easy to get in and we were very fortunate in being allocated a little park up a bit away from the other vans, with the path to Currawong on one side and the internal gravel road on the other. Still, it was quiet overnight, which is the main thing.

The organisers had booked mainly local artists, with one group from South Australia, and we felt the overall quality was a good as any in years past, so we really do have some fantastic performers. It’s good to give them work.

We booked in for evening meals as that helps with socialising. At first we felt there was hardly anyone we knew at the festival, but over time we connected with more and more people. There were enough Working Voices choir members to form a little group to perform in the open mike session on Sunday afternoon. We chose songs that are fun as well as having a climate change message so that hopefully we were entertaining.

Coming back to the van late at night it was very cold indeed. The first night we tried the option of lighting a gas burner on the stove to warm things up, but Saturday and Sunday night we used our little ceramic fan heater on the lowest setting. I had tested it at night before we left and after an initial drawing down of power it seems to settle. Having the BMB-712 to measure the effect was extremely useful as I don’t think we would have felt at all comfortable if we had been relying on the voltage reading. We only used it for about half an hour, but it took the chill off.

Apart from that, the weather was delightful, partly cloudy, but quite a lot of sunshine as well. On Sunday after singing we took a walk down to the river with some friends.

There are lots of traditional sections to the festival programme and we enjoyed all of the familiar steps in the process. We bought raffle tickets and hoped to not win the main prize, a painting, and were also not successful with all the subsequent draws. Not that it wasn’t a nice painting, but we don’t really have any more room on our walls.

On Monday morning we took breakfast at the new cafe attached to the Visitors Centre. We had already decided to bypass the cafe we usually go to, just as well as our friends reported it was closed. We enjoyed chatting with them and as they had secured a table indoors it was great to be invited to join them. Afterwards we were sort of bailed up by one of the other Festival participants for a session of him oversharing and going down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories about COVID. The person said he found it difficult to make friends and people did not contact him after meeting even though phone numbers/email addresses were exchanged. By the time we escaped we understood why this might happen. It is sad because he really is a nice person.

On the way home we stopped in at Serpentine, but this time went out to the dam. We had had a shared cooked breakfast at the cafe, and as we often do, then had our cereal and fruit for lunch. It was very wet and cold, but we still managed to get a walk to the waterfalls and I took photos of soggy kangaroos. They didn’t appear to be in the least bothered by the rain and cold, but we don’t speak their language and perhaps they were complaining to each other.

All in all, a good weekend. I’ve just checked with Mike at Ken Peachy regarding our heater. When I called in to see if we could fit a heater/hot water system in the van he wasn’t there. He doesn’t know if it was ordered or not and will check for me. I didn’t want to seem impatient, but it has been five weeks now and I’m so glad I rang because it appears that nothing was happening!