Lower Hunter Valley and Departure from Australia

Spot the native animals in the vineyards. How often do you see that?!?




08.14.08: After being spoiled by all the availability of good wine for 2 months in Europe, then not really anything for 3 months in Asia, we got to Australia and I was happy to drink some good stuff again. I wish I could have done more wine tasting in Europe. So, I suppose I was on a mission to do some in Australia. Outside of Sydney is a big wine producing region called the Lower Hunter Valley. We couldn’t really find a good mode of transport on our own, so we ended up booking with Boutique Wine Tours. (Caitlin was lucky enough to enjoy the wine also, as she was old enough to drink in this country!) We had to wake up at the crack of dawn AGAIN, and I was seriously ready for another day of rest. But we had to meet the coach at Circular Quay at 7:50am, which meant we had to leave our apartment to walk to the ferry by 6:30am. Luckily, all we had to do was stumble (from lack of sleep, not from too much wine…yet!) on with six others and sit there for a couple hours drive. The tour took us to a handful of smaller boutique wineries, a café for lunch, as well as The Smelly Cheese shop and a chocolatier for cheese and chocolate tasting too. The nice thing about the tour is that they also took requests. So, I inquired about organic wines and voila! They took Sean, Caitlin, Kailani and I to an organic winery, Tambourlaine, while the others went to some of the other wineries nearby. It was great to ask the winemaker some questions. We found out that it took them 12 years to finally become certified and they are still on their way to becoming biodynamic. I was always under the impression that, because organic wines don’t have pesticides, which are made from sulfides, that the wine would contain less, even though there are still some sulfides that naturally develop during the fermentation process. As I found out, their wines have about 80% less sulfides. Good to know for anyone that can’t usually drink wine because of the sulfides…

Fortunately, Kailani took a brief nap during our first winery tasting. It must have been the early morning wake-up. But, during our last winery tasting, Kailani, who was so patient with all of this boring wine business, finally had it. I took her outside to run around while the rest of the crew was inside tasting, and finally decided to give her a snack. But she got a bit crazy, bounced her chin off the pavement and got a pretty good war wound. I’m just glad it was only pavement rash and she didn’t break a tooth or bite her tongue! Luckily, the rest of the coach decided that she was such a good girl, that she deserved to pick which DVD to watch on the ride home. So, Happy Feet it was. That kept her entertained until she fell asleep again. Just like the other nights, when we finally got back to Sydney, took the ferry to Manly and walked back to our apartment, we collapsed for the night.

The next evening, Friday, Caitlin and Tutu were flying back to Hawaii. And, Sean, Kailani and I were flying to Auckland, New Zealand the day after that. But, someone else had dibs on our apartment, so we had to move out again. Luckily, Manly Surfside had another apartment available down the street, but it still meant we had to move, which was still a minor annoyance with all our luggage in tow. When we went to check-out/check-in, were “bumped” to another apartment, a 3 bedroom 2 ½ bath “luxury” level one. Too bad it was just the three of us for one night, instead of all five of us for the entire week! Still, it was nice. After shopping for a few more last things on The Corso, Caitlin, Kai and I trekked to the Manly ferry while Sean and Tutu took their luggage, plus one large duffel bag of our Bali artwork and our summer clothes, in a taxi. This time from Circular Quay, we took the train to the Sydney airport for one last dinner with Caitlin and Tutu. By the time we took the reverse route, got back to the apartment and packed up our stuff a bit tighter, it was late.

And, of course...we had to wake up at the crack of dawn AGAIN, one last time, to get back to the airport for our 11:30am flight. It was so early that the Manly ferry wasn’t running yet. Luckily, the Manly JetCat, a faster catamaran, still ran at 7am on a Saturday morning. Taking that just meant that we couldn’t use our week-long pass, and we had to pay for another ticket, but at least we got there. Go figure, that when we arrived at the airport and stood in line for what seemed like forever, we finally get to the ticket counter to get told that they cancelled our flight due to bad weather. Luckily, there were still seats left on the 3:30pm flight. While waiting, we already got two different contacts from New Zealanders on the same flight as us who told us to contact them when we get there. Talk about a friendly country! Anyway, all I kept thinking was that I could have been sleeping in our luxury apartment for a few more hours if only they we had a phone number for Air New Zealand to call us and tell us of the news. Oh well!

I’m very grateful that we again got lucky with weather while in Sydney. Although it was cold, at times bone-chilling cold, it didn’t rain with the exception of an hour or so when we were shopping at The Rocks weekend market, and we were under a tent at the time. Unfortunately, we didn’t get lucky with the waves. They were small the only day we went surfing. And, it got flatter the rest of the week, except of course, the last day we were there. But then again, we ended up with more than enough to keep us occupied. As far as a cancelled flight from Australia to New Zealand due to bad weather, I guess it tells you what we are in for when we arrive.

* I also want to give a big thanks to Gabi, who told me about Port Douglas. You are right. It was a nice place!