Friday 10th to Monday 13th, 2023

We went to the Songfest because Stephen’s choir, The Real Sing, was singing there. We found it fairly easy to get ready because we hadn’t completely unpacked from the previous weekend. We left the house at about 10.15 a.m. and arrived in Busselton in time for a late lunch. We went to the jetty area where there is a takeaway cafe with some indoor tables. After a good rest, food and short walk we settled in for the rest of the drive to the caravan park.

Normally at the Dunsborough Lakes CP it is quite informal, we are allowed to choose our own site and don’t worry too much if someone else takes it whilst we are still at the evening concert as there are plenty of free sites. This time it was quite busy and we were escorted to site 2.

We quickly ran into some friends also camping there. We had dinner and settled in before driving to the first concert at the Old Town Hall. We stayed for some of the other music as well as Stephen’s bit, and confirmed that although there are some good choirs, there are also some acts that are really sub par.

We arrived back at our site without any problems and had a good night’s sleep.

In the morning Stephen had two separate gigs in the main shopping area, one in a foyer and one in the open air at the markets. I found some unusual treats, cruskits, which we found interesting and tasty even though they are quite hard and need dunking in tea or coffee.

After that we found a beach park up for a short while before heading off for the afternoon concert at the Catholic Church. We found it sufficiently interesting to stay for most of the concert before heading down to the old town boat ramp for a rest. We were joined in the van by our old friend Ian. He’s very intense, best in small doses, but we are fond of him and he is always interesting to listen to.

In the evening we had tea at one of the houses where other choir members are staying. We sort of ate and ran because we wanted to get to the evening concert, fortunately some of the others did as well as we were joined by members of Coralie’s other choir, Peppermint, and they were singing at the evening concert. It was a good evening and we stayed until about 9.15 when the concert ended. There was ongoing music happening, but we wanted to get to bed.

When we arrived back at the caravan park a caravan was parked in our bay. The bay next to it was free, but we weren’t sure we could use it as there was a Campervan there on Friday night and we didn’t know if it would be coming back. I checked with the caravan occupants, they were most upset that I knocked on their door, and they confirmed that they had been given our site to be next to their friends and we had been reassigned next door. It would have been a courtesy if the caravan park managers had let us know, but I guess it was beyond their capacity.

In the morning we decided not to complain about not being told as we were leaving a bit late and wanted to get our money back for the key to the main gate. I hope the other people complained, but perhaps they were too grateful about being allocated our site to complain that we weren’t told.

We stayed for most of the concert at the Catholic Church where TRS performed once more, then went up to the primary school to catch the last few acts. It was well worth it as they saved the best for last.

It was well after 12.00 by the time it was finished and we thought we should have lunch before deciding where to go for the night. We drove along the beach and eventually found a large car park with a view of the beach. We had lunch and rested and explored around.

It became clear that it might be possible to stay the night and I asked a young Campervan owner who said that they had stayed a night previously and planned to stay Sunday night as well. We moved to a spot somewhat hidden behind bushes and after a bit of a cleanup of left behind rubbish had a comfortable spot for the night. There were bins for getting rid of the rubbish.

We had a peaceful night, no rangers came, and we didn’t try to get away early. We had explored along the path in the evening and in the morning just went down to the jetty to enjoy the morning. It rained in the early morning, just enough to bring down lots of dust from the trees onto the van. Fortunately there was a little rain on the drive home which mostly cleared it.

I’m not going to say where we stayed as we would like to stay there again and don’t want to alert the authorities.

On the way home we took a slight diversion and found a nice spot on the Mandurah estuary to rest and have a walk around. There was good birdwatching and a little cafe where I bought an icecream.

And then driving home. The freeway was busy and there had been a bit of a bingle at one stage. Still, when I’m tired I don’t want to drive fast all the way, so it was a chance to drive slowly for a bit.

At home we did some unpacking, but not everything as there is one more weekend to go in our three weekend cluster.