How Denmark’s Courtenay Stickels leaned into life’s journey, becoming a cook and creating Courty’s Table

Courtenay Stickels has always loved cooking, but she never expected that it would become her job. The Denmark-based cook fell into the profession serendipitously after an overnight stay at a remote station during a road trip to the Pilbara and never looked back. It was a long way from where she thought her life was going in her early 20s when she moved to Melbourne from her hometown of Perth with the hope of breaking into the music industry and becoming “Australia’s next big thing”. In Melbourne, Stickels began tapping into an interest in cooking. “My mum was such a great cook, and she created such a beautiful sense of home,” she said. “It wasn’t so much the food that she made, but it was the effort and the love that she put into everything around it. “There were always candles on the table, she always polished the cutlery. “When I moved away, I started taking an interest a lot more in cooking and having dinner parties and having people come over because I was, I think subconsciously, just trying to get back to that feeling of the hearth — you know, just sort of the home fire burning.” After becoming disillusioned with the music industry and realising pop stardom wasn’t the right path for her, Stickels returned to Perth and obtained a degree in communication and cultural studies. Stickels then had what she described as a “massive spiritual awakening”, going to India for six months where she studied how the human voice can be used as a healing tool. It was a life-changing experience for Stickels, which she said propelled her on a new “voyage of life”. “I’ve discovered that the way that I was made was not to plan but to know thyself, do your own inner work, be open to the world around you and to the doors as they open and recognise when doors are closed,” she said. “And don’t push it, just let life give you the experience that you’re meant to be having and the life that is awaiting you, as opposed to the life that you’re trying to create all the time.” This approach has taken her on a varied journey, from working as a youth development worker in Aboriginal communities in the Central Desert region to experiencing the devastating Christchurch earthquake in 2011 soon after relocating to the city, and then working in community outreach to help the recovery effort. Four years ago, Stickels returned to Australia from living overseas and began to rebuild her life in WA after going through a traumatic separation and experiencing mental health struggles. She embarked on a road trip to the Pilbara with her mum, not knowing that it would be another journey with a life-changing result and an opportunity for her to tap into her love of cooking and feeding people. “We got rained out on the way up and we had our tents and swags on the roof of the car,” she said. “We didn’t want to get wet so we just asked around to see where we could maybe pull in and roll out a swag under cover somewhere, and a lot of people suggested Bullara Station.” Neither Stickels nor her mum had ever heard of the station, located between Coral Bay and Exmouth, but after camping there for one night, Stickels felt at home. “The next day, I just felt so good there, we went to get some coffees in the morning and square up our camp fees,” she said. “And I just said ‘I love this place, I feel so good here. Can I have a job as a cook?’. “And I’d never worked professionally before. “And they said ‘Actually, we need somebody in two months’.” When Stickels returned to Perth she bought a chef’s knife and some aprons, packed up her car and embarked on a new adventure, channelling her love for food into her new job cooking for the station’s staff. Her boss mentored her in the art of cooking with large quantities of food and was also keen to establish a dining experience for guests passing through, with Stickels to cook for them all. It was a daunting task at first, but she came to relish the opportunity of having creative freedom over what she cooked and found focusing on cooking a healing process. “We got these huge long tables made, and everyone sat down at them — paying guests, road crews, musterers that would come through for the annual muster, the staff — everyone just sat at the same table and ate whatever I put down,” she said. “So it was this idea of not making food elite, or dividing people through food. It was like, it doesn’t matter who you are, you’re all welcome at my table, and everybody eats the same.” After working seasonally at the station for four years and travelling around WA’s north as a freelance chef, Stickels was in need of some greenery and contacted a foodie friend in Denmark who helped her find a job in the town. She planned to stay just for the summer before heading north again — but three years later Denmark is still her home. Towards the end of last year, she started Courty’s Table, a long-table, set-menu pop-up dining experience at the Denmark Surf Life Saving Club with the aim of bringing people from all walks of life together over hearty food, in an environment akin to being welcomed into a friend’s kitchen. The winning formula of her popular events will feed into Stickel’s event this Saturday for Taste Great Southern, titled the Singer and the Cook. The evening at Henderson and Hwang in Kendenup will feature “classic homestead fare”, including lamb from an organic grass-fed farm just 15 minutes drive from her home in Denmark. After the meal, Stickels will also perform original songs with local musicians Adam Grok and Mark Gretton, bringing together her new path in cooking with her lifelong love of singing. “It’s just a real celebration of what Taste Great Southern is,” Stickels said. “But it’s a real celebration of the relationships of this area and the amazing gamut of people like growers, farmers, florists, winemakers and cheese makers, who are all contributing to this event.” Ticket sales for the event close on Friday morning, and are available from https://bit.ly/428CCUs.