Hi everyone. Hope you’re all well. This week is a semi-regular feature where I share some diary entries and thoughts from recent weeks. Hope you enjoy :)
Last week we set off on a roadtrip heading up to the north of Western Australia to stay on a remote sheep station. We made it as far as our first night stopover and then had to turn around and come home. Heavy rains in the region meant road closures as the roads into the station are unsealed, and therefore not very convincing when you throw rain into the mix. Especially when you happen to be travelling by hatchback, which we were.
It was pretty disappointing. We were excited to get away and clear our heads, see more of the outback, and also get to experience a sheep station. It's not a working station anymore, it's more of a tourist destination with a focus on restoring the land, so there are no livestock and therefore my two weeks of previously accumulated knowledge of being a sheep farmer would unfortunately not have come in handy. And so instead we had to make do with a single night adventure in a country town called Mingenew, four hours north of Perth.
We didn't have any strong feelings about Mingenew. It's an unassuming little town with a population of just 400. The people seemed friendly. It had a tiny main street with some historic buildings. And also a hill that you can walk up and then look down at stuff. A good, solid tourist activity.
We were excited to try the pub. I like country pubs because they feel like a good way to get a sense of a place; to be able to people-watch, listen in on some chatter and get up close with the local characters. It was also a cold, rainy night and the only place within a 50km radius to find a hot meal.
However, the Mingenew pub wasn't quite what we were hoping for. Rather than a cosy atmosphere, the indoor decorators had instead gone for maximum brightness by way of fluorescent strip lights. Which is obviously what everyone wants when they're out enjoying a meal and having a quiet drink, and that is to be able to see every imperfection of every person in the pub in vivid detail. I imagine this is partly why restaurants and bars turn the lights right up at the end of the night. There's nothing like being confronted with the horror of a room full of excessive consumption to really put a dampener on things and bring the evening to a natural close.
While the lighting was screaming at us from above, it was audibly quiet inside. It was a Thursday night after all. The sole lady behind the bar was friendly, greeting us and offering some menus. The only other people in the pub, two locals sitting at the bar, paused their conversations to watch while this went on and we set off in search of somewhere to sit.
We found a room that was a bit more cosy - a small alcove with much better lighting - but unfortunately it was let down by the fact that it had a not inconspicuous amount of dog crap on the floor. Actual dog crap. And not in one spot either, but distributed across the floor. I did wonder whether this was a case for brighter lighting after all.
Despite the more suitable levels of ambience, dog shit tends to diminish a cosy vibe so we went and found a table at the other end of the pub and tried not to think about it too much. This was, after all, our only option for dinner.
I'm not sure what it says about us, but we chose not to bring it up. I think it was partly tiredness. It had been a long day, and we just wanted to eat a hot meal. I also didn't want to have to report a hot mess.
Also, imagine the tutting from the locals. Typical city people - can't handle a bit of dog shit in the dining room.
Both of us ordered the Chicken Parmigiana, which, if you’re not familiar, is a crumbed chicken fillet with Neapolitan sauce and melted cheese on top, and generally served with chips and salad, and which every country pub and most city pubs in Australia are required by law to serve. Not really, but let's just say that it's a staple dish. If you run a country pub and you don't serve it, you're very much risking a local uprising and only have yourself to blame if your pub happens to get burned to the ground.
The Chicken Parmigiana, or Chicken Parmi as you're supposed to call it unless you're some uptight city person, is a bonafide classic pub meal. It has also been known to also go by the name Chicken in Pajamas, but you should never call it that. ‘Cringe’, I believe is what the kids call it these days.
And I'm happy to say the Parmi was very good. Delicious even. Yes the lighting was bad, yes there was dog shit, and yes maybe the conversation at the bar nearby was rough, with the locals loudly exchanging stories about different people that had died by suicide, followed by the lady behind the bar telling a story about when she was sick into a pot plant, complete with wretching noises thrown in, all right when we had started eating our meals. Despite all this, the Chicken Parmigiana held up.
And that's perhaps the thing I figured out from all of this, which is just how important the Chicken Parmi is to a pub, especially a country pub. You can get most things wrong, the pub could even be on fire but as long as they do a good Parmi, then that's all that matters. People might make a few comments about it being a bit smokey, but then they would go back to enjoying their meal.
Is the Parmi good? Yes. Well that's that then. It's only a bit of fire and dog shit. Just pretend you're having a picnic in the park and someone is having a BBQ nearby. And if you can't get over it, well then maybe you should head back to the city.
We did head back to the city the next day. And it may not have been the adventure we were hoping for - eating a Parmi quite near to some dog shit is no Treasure Island - but unfortunately it will have to do for an adventure this time around.
The rain may have ended our trip but we can't really get too upset. It's nice to see more rain. It's been a bit late coming this year but now that it's here, everything smells and feels fresher again.
We all smell better after a good wash and it was getting very close to the point where a quiet word may have been needed. For someone to pull the weather aside and gently suggest that a bit of a shower might be in order.
Fortunately, no awkward chats were needed in the end, and the arrival of both the rain and winter temperatures has meant that more bush walks have been possible. To be able to tuck in under some tall trees and indulge in a forest bath. And to tune into the flowing creeks. Who doesn't love the sound of trickling water from a stream? It seems like it would be a universal thing, to find trickling water relaxing, but then again I imagine plumbers must find it stressful. It probably sounds like work. A leaking tap, a hose that's burst.
We went on a hike in a wildlife sanctuary recently. Even though it's called a sanctuary, it's essentially a huge area of protected wild bushland and forest that is fenced off and filled with walk trails. Fences surround the outer perimeter which protect the wildlife from cats and other feral animals.
The last time we'd been there, we'd seen an echidna. As we walked along the trail, it suddenly appeared next to us, slightly off the track and trundling along through the bush. We almost missed it because of an in-depth discussion about luggage. Hikes and long walks offer the opportunity to go off on all sorts of wide-ranging and deep discussions, so the fact that we stumbled upon an echidna in the wild while we were talking in great detail about luggage only serves to highlight just how trivial the subject matter was. Now whenever I'm on a hike, I find myself glancing around trying to spot any interesting wildlife when the conversation tips over into more trivial, mundane topics. For instance, socks came up as a topic the other day and I half expected a wildebeest to wander out from behind a tree.
It was the first time I'd ever seen an echidna in the wild. In person even. They're a beautiful range of different shades of brown spread across their spindly bod. Like a thick pile of knitting needles that have been left out in the rain to rust and discolour. And are now a rich assortment of browns.
We watched it for a while as it moved through the bush in a sort of slow half-ripple, half-shuffle. The ground was covered in leaf litter and sticks and it moved with ease, as if its resemblance to a bundle of sticks made it possible to become one with the sticks below. In front, a tiny snout poked out and sniffed its way forward.
We watched it for 15 minutes or so and then left it to continue its journey into the bush and away from us. Quite possibly because of a desire to get away from any more luggage chat, which is completely fair.
I understand the desire for a zoomie. I think dogs are better than us in that way. They’re far less self-conscious. They feel excited and have a burst of energy and so they express that. I think all of us humans secretly wish we could let out a zoomie from time to time. That we could all be accepting of that and less self-conscious. And in an ideal world, should we ever see someone running like a mad person from one room to another, we can stop and say ‘good on them. They must feel really happy’.
Perhaps I’m saying all of this because I am quite partial to a zoomie. I think I keep that energy fairly under wraps if you were to meet me in person. And I don’t run around the house or anything like that, but privately I very occasionally like to engage in zoomie-adjacent behavior. For instance, sometimes if I’ve had a particularly serious conversation with someone on the phone where it feels like we're putting on certain graces and quite obviously pretending to be Serious Adults, once I hang up I’ll need to release some energy. Which might take the form of an in-chair zoomie.
This all came about because I saw a video of a dog recently losing its shit because it was so excited about a tiny paddling pool, and I thought it was a glorious, life affirming moment. Plus, who doesn’t love a paddling pool. That to me is a perfectly reasonable response to finding out you suddenly have your own paddling pool, and may we see more of that out in the world, not just from dogs, but from adults too.
I love dogs but to be fair, there's a probably a Tik-Tok of a dog having a zoomie because of finding some dog shit. They aren't the most discriminating creatures -- sort of like the owners of that pub.
Your plumber observation hit me deep 😂 and yeah, about that elephant in the room - when in entirely new environments, "they're going to shoot the messenger" tends to win out as an assumption. "Maybe this is how it's done, here?" It's hard to have our first interaction be a "did you know that...", projecting what we expect onto a place we hardly know. Glad the Parmi held up for you. The pub's common denominator.