Adventures in Hunter Valley and the Blue Mountains

Normally we would give visitors a few days to settle in and recover from jet lag. And we would also plan to spend at least a full day to properly see the Blue Mountains, and a couple days for Hunter Valley. But we didn't have much time, so we had to fit as much as possible into two days. Luckily us Burwinkles excel at this. We started with a 7 AM departure from Sydney to drive up the Blue Mountains. Luckily for everyone, it was another sunny morning and we were heading against the traffic, so it was a quickly and easy drive up the mountain.   

Another sight that never gets old

 

Wentworth Falls

   

   

  After a stop in Katoomba for some sandwiches and a picnic lunch, it was time to hit the road! We had a four hour drive through national park to take the scenic route over to Hunter Valley.  

  It was pretty curvy road, so roadside stops were needed. There was only one real rest stop we encountered on the drive; most of them looked like this (aka no bathrooms):  

  But the drive was really lovely. We heard Bell birds while we left the mountains, and then passed through farmland and forest. Until we ended up here:   

We got into Hunter Valley just in time for a quick tasting at one of our favorites.  

 

  And then out to our house for the night, right before the rain set in! Our little house was very cute, nestled in some farmland with cows and olive groves. I have to admit it was a little far out - we had to drive about 40 minutes to get to the main winery area. But the description of the villa mentioned wombats in the area, so the chance of seeing those guys was worth the drive. To most of us, anyway! The house was in a little town called Wollombi, which we thought might also bode well for seeing wallabies.  

View from our house

 

Relaxing Wollombi style

Our little house was great! We had a cozy pasta dinner the first night and listened to it rain.  And we saw some little wallaby visitors!

Day Two of our whirlwind trip began with coffee at the house and then a journey into town for a hearty breakfast. 

A true holiday adventure: figuring out a new coffee machine

We had a full day of wine tasting ahead of us so we wanted start the day out right.  Since it was a Tuesday not all the wineries were open for tastings, but we had list of several places to visit.    

First stop: Bimbadgen Wines

  As we were leaving Bimbadgen we saw some wallabies hanging out under the vines for a morning nap!  

Only in Australia!

 

We got to see more animal life later in the day at Tyrell's.  The groundskeeper brought along his French bulldog to help with the gardening.  Actually, Edie was supposed to stay in the car while he did work but she must have sensed that there were some lovely dog-loving Americans in the tasting room and she couldn't resist coming to hang out with us!

 

Edie, the groundskeeper's dog, taking a little break

  But, back to the main mission for the day - wine tastings!  In all, we visited five vineyards on Tuesday and tasted so many good wines.  We stocked up on some of our favorites to enjoy back in Sydney and later on in New Zealand.   

 

One of the best parts of Hunter Valley is the lovely winery grounds. Flowers were in bloom, so we took time at nearly every stop to walk around and enjoy the outdoors.  

 

 

 

Group photo!

 

  The other great part of visiting wineries is getting to chat with some really interesting people. At Tyrrells, one of the men pouring tastings had a hobby of learning all the US state capitals, and he has been working on the state flowers. He was pretty excited that Toby knew the iris was the Tennessee state flower. It seemed to pique his enthusiasm, so he kept popping up with new trivia questions for us while we were there: like the five stare capitals that have "city" in the name.

Kickin' it Aussie style during a picnic lunch at Audrey Wilkinson

  Without fail, every place we stopped, there was someone eager to discuss the US election with us. I knew that people in Sydney had been following the process pretty closely, and the trend held true in the Hunter. People brought up the electoral college, and why it meant that someone could win the popular vote and still not be elected - a pretty weird concept when you think about it, but certainly one that the Aussies are familiar with now. People also asked about our states, how they voted, how we thought Trump would do as a president etc. And in true Aussie fashion, people didn't really hold back on their opinions of him, which was both funny and weird when you're not used to such frankness! After an Italian dinner in town, we headed back to the house.  We had another early morning departure planned for Wednesday so it was a low key evening and then off to bed! But we were able to see a bit of the Super Moon, even though it wasn't the brightest night.  

  Wednesday morning we were up bright and early to head back to Sydney.  We had all been on the lookout for wombats since we arrived in Hunter Valley and we were finally rewarded with a wombat sighting as we drove through the mountain farmland Wednesday morning!