Vino, vino and more vino!

Leaving Sydney was like the end of an era for us, after living here for almost four months. It was quite sad leaving it all behind, even Kings Cross! But with only eight months left and a huge country to explore it was certainly time to get moving. It took a day to sort out the flat, we hadn't realised how much stuff we had accumulated - a few trips to the charity shop and packages home had us sorted. So with our backpacks loaded, two bus tickets up the East Coast we were ready to embark on the next step of our journey 'down under'. Our first stop was just 2 hours from Sydney to Hunter Valley.

Behind the scenes

Wine was the only reason our guide book states to come to Hunter Valley, a pretty good reason in our book and frankly why we decided to pay a visit. We've always wanted to go wine tasting and what better then to come to a place in Australia with over 50 wineries and nicknamed 'Wine Country'. We visited four wineries on our tour, each very different in style from ultra modern to small boutique, which only sell from the cellar door. Lindermans was the most famous we visited, their bottles of vino travel as far as a little island called Britain, anyway it's good wine and good value so we treated ourselves to a few bottles - they won't last long! Although more 'red' drinkers we're not too fussy and tried everything from expensive chardonnays to cab merlots to desert wines, to chocolate liquors and even 25 year old port - there was certainly no spitting involved either, why waste good alcohol! The last winery we visited for the day was our favourite, not just because we were pretty tipsy at this point but it had more character (namely Graham - the owner) then the previous three put together. You couldn't help but have fun with Graham and we learnt loads about grapes, making & maturing wine and German sausage of all things. To top the day off we spotted our first kangaroo since being in Oz!

Cheers!

The next day we rode bikes up to a small local zoo where we came face to face with a baby croc, saw some odd albino kangaroos, chatted with a cockatoo and stroked a koala, it was sooooooo cute!!!!

How cute!!!

Outside the famous Lindermans

Tie me kangaroo down sport...