Hunter Valley

We spent a few days in the Hunter Valley wine region after NYE.

Adam had booked a lovely cottage for my birthday present. The people who owned the farm we stayed on were really friendly, and had a funny labradoodle who wanted to play all the time; we were her friends forever after we gave her a bit of bacon in the morning!


We went out to a few of the vineyards a did a bit of wine tasting and bought a few bottles! Found one lovely estate, the Wandin Valley, which we might join as members. There's no joining fee, you just buy 6 bottles every 3 months for a discounted price, then you can stay there for free for a few nights a year. They also invite you up to pick the grapes and stamp around on them which sounds like fun! The Fatso's Revenge red we particularly liked - tasted nice and I always like a bottle with a nice picture on the bottle ;-)
It is quite an isolated area though, you definitely need a car to get around (or book a bus trip if you're going to taste a lot of wine!) . But there are a lot of tourists and we realised to late that we should have booked in somewhere for Saturday dinner.



I really enjoyed the horse riding at Hill Top. We saw loads of grey kangaroos in the fields which felt proper Australian. We tried trotting a few times, I'm sure mine was galloping though, it felt very fast to me! ;-)

NYE in Sydney

We were invited to a brilliant cocktail party by some friends just down the road for new years eve. Their flat is a bit higher up and futher along than ours so we had a brilliant view of the fireworks.

there were 2 sets, one at 9 and another at 12 - apparently 5 tonnes in all! they had 4 different sets going off at the same time on the bridge and then on barges up the river, really amazing although my camera wasn't great at get pics of it.

The party was particularly unique because of Will and Rachel's chinese lanterns which we set off at midnight, really beautiful. Thankfully the people in the flat downstairs were able to catch mine and set it off again before it started burning down the houses. Will's BBQ skills have to be noted too!

Blue Mountains - Wentworth Pass

We went on a trip up to the Blue Mountains - about 1 1/2 hours from Sydney in the car.

They are called mountains but they'remore like canyons and gorges, from the bottom of which the top does seem quite high! It's called the Blue Mountains since the pines make a kind of blue-ish haze, very dense jungle type areas and lots of really beautiful waterfalls.

We went to an area called Wentworth falls and walked along the Wentworth pass to Empress falls. The first part of the walk is quite touristy by the falls, then you start to go down some extremely steep stairs and ladders to get to the bottom of the canyon. They're the reason for the 'hard' grading in the walk book I think, the rest of the walk is not too bad and only about 6k. It takes about 3 hours though with all the ladders and having a paddle in the pools and the bottom of the falls!

A map of where we went is here, but bewarned the stairs are quite tough!

Boxing day walk

We went for a walk from Mosman along the coast past Taronga. Stopped off at a small beach near our house called Athol Cove I think, it was a really hot day but the water is still pretty cold so didn't manage much of a swim.

Xmas day in Bondi

We had a lovely christmas day with Adam's brother Matt and over in Bondi with some friends, Ryan cooked an amazing roast dinner!

4wd

Cars a pretty expensive out here, I think it must be to do with importing them and all the tax.

We set out to get a small honda jazz or something, but ended up with a Nissan Xtrail 4x4!

I do feel a bit of environmental guilt but it will be great to go out to the mountains with and to get over to Manly with surfboards (have to learn to surf now!)

I'm finding it easier to drive than I thought, although parking is still a bit of a problem. It has already proved it's worth though after a massive trip to ikea showed we could fit so much in it - a bit more practical than the honda 2000 was!

Can't wait to do a trip up to the blue mountains now.!

Mosman sunsets

We've finally got broadband at home so will have to make up for lack of posts.

We had a great sunset from the balcony the other day! Really beautiful. We're finding Mosman to be a little bit too quiet for us (might move to Bondi or somewhere after our lease is up) but this kind of thing makes up for it!

I love sitting out on the balcony, so peaceful :-)