Category: Travel

Travelling Tassie III

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We were up bright and early (well, we weren’t very bright and it wasn’t that early) for a walk around Freycinet National Park on the Sunday. We arrived armed with a map, water, snacks and brand new sunnies (I was struggling without them!!) and of course Hubs’ camera! We decided on the Wineglass Bay and Hazards Beach circuit which was 11km and supposedly 5 hours. Hubs was really keen to do Mt Amos as well, but we weren’t sure we’d fit it in. I suggested we try and push ourselves through the first walk and then decide after that.

We started off around 11am and I gotta say, the first 1.5km was hard going! The weather was incredible and within about 15 minutes, both Hubs and I had removed our thermals, which we had to carry around for the rest of the walk! (It was 8 degrees that morning!!!) We got to the top of the lookout and had a great view of Wineglass Bay.

No, that is not a cardboard cut out of our silhouettes! Hubs wanted to lighten it but I got impatient and wanted to blog before he got around to it! 🙂 Now, there are a couple of different stories about how Wineglass Bay got it’s name – one is that it is shaped like a wineglass, but the other is that there were 2 whale slaughter stations situated at the beginning of the bay, and that all the blood from the whales would come in and “fill up” the bay and look like a glass full of red wine. Gross.

We trekked on (downhill!) to the bay and it was just as beautiful at the bottom.

It seemed pretty damn chilly, what, with the close proximity to Antarctica!!, but that didn’t stop some crazy people from going swimming! We left them to it and cut across on the track to Hazards beach which was just as stunning.

We took our shoes off and enjoyed the feeling of the sand between our toes. I actually felt the water, and to my surprise it wasn’t as freezing as I was expecting! The last part of the track was through the bush and over rocks and through trees and all sorts of fun things! I really like those sort of hike/walks. Especially with the glorious weather – you can see from the photos how stunning it was! We got back to the start at around 3:30pm and with the light fading fast (no more daylight savings!!) we decided against Mt Amos. Hubs was a bit disappointed, but was getting a bit sore, and I was absolutely stuffed, so we just headed back to the car. After taking some photos of a Wallaby:

We had cooled down by this stage and it was freezing! So on went the thermals again, and we returned to Swansea via another bay and a lighthouse. All lovely sights to see! We arrived “home” around 6pm, exhausted (and chilly!) after another great day out.

Travelling Tassie II

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On the Saturday (24th April) we headed to the Salamanca Markets for a little look-see.

It was quite busy and we slowly made our way around the whole place. I gotta tell you, it’s pretty depressing walking around markets for 2-3 hours, knowing you don’t really have any spending money!! The usual suspects were there (jams, cards, clothes, jewellery) but Hubs and I were quite taken with the wood carvings and the leather goods, respectively. The weather was quite okay – a bit windy which blew the autumn leaves up in the air which was so gorgeous. We then hopped into the car and started heading up to Swansea.

On the way, we had to stop at Orford for this amazing view:

The clouds were completely covering those mountains when we first got there, but by the time Hubs set the camera up, it was starting to clear. Very pretty none-the-less! We arrived at Swansea around 3pm and caught up with Lesla (a relative, but too hard to explain how we’re related!!) over a cup of tea and some ANZAC bikkies – it was the ANZAC day long weekend after all! It was such a beatiful afternoon that Lesla took us for a walk along the beach – practically on her doorstep!

It really was very pleasant! We got home a bit before dark and settled in for an evening BBQ (cooked outside, eaten inside – it wasn’t that warm!) Mike and Lesla gave us some info about Freycenet National Park – our destination for the following day, and after watching a bit of the footy, we headed to bed for a nice, warm, cozy night sleep.

Travelling Tas

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A couple of weekends ago, Hubs and I ventured over the Bass Strait to Hobart and beyond. We arrived around 9pm on the Thursday night and were picked up by the shuttle and taken straight to our B&B. Unfortunately, the room we had was right on Macquarie st – the main one-way street into the city, so from about 2am onwards, the trucks rolling in ensured that I had a poor night sleep, and in turn, so did Hubs. Oh well. We got up (grumbling) around 8:30, had some brekky, and went to pick up our hire car. We were given a map of the Huonville area, and we made our way out to the Tahune Airwalk – a must see when you visit Hobart!

The trip there was half the fun! The roads were lovely and the scenery just gorgeous. We drove along the Huon River which was certainly a sight to behold. It actually reminded me of the Hawkesbury River, but on a much smaller scale. We stopped in at Huonville for some snacks and supplies, and also in Crabtree to check out the local shops – both delightful little towns!

We arrived at the airwalk and paid for entry. The place is run by Forestry Tasmania, and is set in the Tahune Forest Reserve. Although a bit pricey, ($46 for both of us), it was a lovely way to spend a few hours and take some happy snaps! (We did the Airwalk and the Swinging Bridges Circuit.)

 Hubs on the Airwalk
Wifey throwing a coin onto the stump…
…and missing… 3 times!!!
Wifey braving the counterlever. Man than thing moves a LOT!
(my thoughts at the time: “Hurry up and take the picture before all those people come and join me!!!!!!!!!!”)
The obligatory Hubs and Wifey shot
One of the suspension bridges. Not very scary – very cool indeed!
Hubs, as usual, took some beautiful photos and is experimenting more and more with his camera, lenses, lighting and panoramas. There are too many to feature here, but I will certainly be putting more up later on. We left the airwalk around 2pm (after an iced chocolate and sausage rolls!) and headed up the very steep road to Mt Wellington. We could feel the air getting colder, but nothing, and I mean nothing could have prepared me for the icy cold wind we encountered at the top. Oh. My. Gosh. I was NOT HAPPY!
Shocking photo, but I had to show you the pain I was in!!!! What this photo doesn’t show was how much Hubs was laughing at me!! It felt like about 5 degrees! I told asked Hubs to go and take some photos while I took shelter so we could get the hell out of there! A photo of Hobart and the Derwent River.
We drove through some fog/cloud on the way down and headed back to our B&B. After dropping the car off, we walked down to Constitution Dock for some fish ‘n chips – it was Friday after all! We picked a pontoon (after too-ing and fro-ing about 5 times!), ordered our dinner, and sat on one of the piers to eat. A great end to a great first day in Tassie!

Winery tour – Day 2

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After a very restful night, a sleep in, bacon and eggs for brekky, and a read of the newspaper about the storm that had hit Melbourne the day before, we set off for Day 2. (I had actually received a couple of texts from friends late in the afternoon asking “are you okay??” and I was like “we’re just on a wine tour dude. We’re fine!” It wasn’t til we got to Sorrento that we heard about the storm and all the damage it did!!) Our first point of call was The Cups Estate, and what an absolute gem that was! We left the camera in the car so I don’t have any photos, but their fortified pinot was incredible. We HAD to buy a bottle (or 2!)

Next we headed towards Arthurs Seat, stopping at The Morning Sun Vinyard. This place was a bit ho-hum. The service wasn’t great and the most popular wines (the had a Pinot and Guwerzt) weren’t on tasting. So we left with a photo instead!

And then it was off to Vidoni Estate which had some rather nice wines. I think we picked a couple up there as well. Nathan was still looking for a good pinot, and it turns out the first one we’d tried at Hickinbotham had been the best by far! So we decided we had to swing by on the way home. But that was later on…

We then started to get a bit hungry so we were on the look out for some foooood. We stopped in at Myrtaceae (again, cos it was there) and they had some special wine tasting glasses:

They only put in wine to fill the neck of the glass, and tell you to give it a smell, and you can’t smell much at all. Then, you roll the glass…..

… give it another whiff, and the smells explode in your nostrils! Clearly, the same outcome can be achieved by just swishing the wine around the glass yourself, but the novelty was fun. And the wines were quite lovely! Still hungry though…

We checked our map and found a place that was recommended by another friend of ours, who used to be a winemaker in the Yarra Valley, so we made our way there. It was REALLY packed and when we asked for a seat in the restaurant, I had a look at the prices of the meals and just couldn’t do it. Meals were between $30-$40 each and wines were about $12 a glass. Nate had a look and said the only thing he’d be keen on was the duck, and the waitress had told us they’d run out of duck. I’m sure the food would have been amazing, but we just could NOT justify that sort of spending, so we made some excuse and excused ourselves, and just tried the wines instead. Which were lovely! (I can’t quite recall, but I think it was Dromana Estate.)

We were getting REALLY hungry at this stage, so we decided to pop in to a bakery and grabbed some pies. There was a duck pie on the menu so Nate settled on that, I grabbed a beef and burgundy and Hubs ordered a steak pie. Mine was really quite delicious and Hubs was raving about his. Nathan was a little disappointed though. As we were almost all finished, I had a bite of Hubs’ and told him that he got Nate’s pie as there was no WAY that was steak. Hee hee. Poor Nate didn’t get his duck after all.

We went to a couple more after this and ended at Darling Park Winery which was really sweet. It was getting late and we had to get back to Hickinbotham for the pinot so we started off home. We arrived around 6:30pm and realised how bad the previous night’s storm actually was. There was debris EVERYwhere. I’m kinda glad we weren’t around, but also a little disappointed we missed the action! Thankfull though, our roof didn’t leak, which it often does.

We headed out to watch Hurt Locker (it was the night of the Academy Awards and we had no idea of it’s success. We thought it was totally awesome) and then headed to Papa Gino’s (of course) for dinner and the Hickinbotham Pinot.

The verdict? One of the BEST wines I’ve ever had in my life. Seriously amazing. It actually didn’t taste much like a Pinot to me, but the flavours and smells hit me in the face like a Samboy Chip. I just couldn’t get enough (although I only had 1 glass) and really wish we’d bought a bottle! Oh well.

It capped off a great weekend of wine-tasting and shennanigans! Next stop? Wangaratta Wine and Jazz festival! Wanna come?

Tassie time!

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Hubs and I are flying to Tassie tonight (woo hoo!) til Tuesday morning and I’m SO excited. I told Hubs that we cannot live in Melbourne for 2 years and not visit Tasmania! We’re not, however, so excited by the weather down there. This week in Melbourne has been atypically amazing! Like today, for instance, we had an overnight low of 18 and it’s currently 28 degrees. Oh yes. A-mazing! On Sunday up here, there will be a cool change to 13-19 for the day. But in Tassie? 9-16 degrees. Yes. 16 degrees MAX!! Ha ha. Oh well. To be expected I suppose!

Regardless, we’re very excited to be going. I picked up some $49 flights (each, each way) and booked us in to a quaint little B&B in Hobart for 2 nights, then we head up the coast to Swansea to stay with family, then back for 1 more night at the B&B and home in time to be a little late to work on Tuesday. 🙂

If you have any suggestions of things we must see, leave me a comment and we’ll try and fit it in! 2 hours of work to go!

Another winery tour

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Our friend Nate came down a few weeks ago (okay, over a month ago!) and we hired a car and set off for the Mornington Peninsula wineries! We had arranged to stay with Hubs’ Dad down at Sorrento Saturday night, and we’d been recommended quite a few wineries to visit! The first one we came across was Hickinbotham of Dromana. Silly name, good wine. I was designate driver (as usual!) so I didn’t really try the wines here.

Nate really liked the Pinot Noir, but he knew he was in Pinot territory, so he didn’t want to buy the first one he tried, so we moved on, empty handed. We then popped in to Dromana Valley Wines cos, you know, it was there, and we were there, but the wines weren’t so great, BUT we bought an $8 bottle of Pinot. We’ll see how that goes (haven’t tried it yet!)

The next winery was recommended to us – Ten Minutes by Tractor. We should have known what sort of place this would be (fancy-pants) going by the person who recommended it to us (fancy-pants). We had to pay for tastings ($5 per person, taken off the total if you make a purchase) which I’m not a huge fan of, but having said that, they really did provide a great service – were very informative and helpful. Again, I just had a little sip of Hubs’ tastings. These wines were gooooood.

Look how professional they are with their tastings!
We didn’t buy anything from here, but I think Nate may have. The wines were very nice but also quite pricey, so we just enjoyed the tasting. 
Now I THINK the next place we stumbled upon was Mantons Creek Vineyard, and it was definitely one of our favourites! The place itself was absolutely gorgeous!
The service was personal and helpful and the wine? Oh my gosh. The Tempranillo was incredible. We were enjoying the tasting so much, and the gentleman who was serving us just mentioned off-hand that their duck, pear and rocket pizza goes very well with that wine. We were hungry, we loved the place so we thought “why not?” And he was right. Oh so very right.
I LOVE when they match the food with the wine and this partnership was a success. We sat ourselves down on the veranda and watched a storm roll in. So I mentioned the Tempranillo. Now let me tell you about the Gewurztraminer. I can’t recall if I’d ever had that wine before, but Nate was super excited when he saw it on the tasting list. He’s been looking for a good Gewurzt for a long time. And he found it here. It is such a beautiful, smooth white wine – I was in love. We bought a couple of those and Nathan got himself a half-case and will no doubt be ordering more! We were sad to leave this winery, but ecstatic that we’d accidentally found it in the first place!
From here, it went downhill for a little bit. We headed to Red Hill Estate and they weren’t tasting they’re own wines that day – they had a “hurry hurry hurry all stock must go prices SLASHED for this weekend only!!” day. It had started raining by this stage, and as we were given our own little plastic shot glasses to help ourselves, and a list of 50 different wines, we knew we were in dodgy territory.
The faces the boys were pulling were hilarious! They certainly didn’t hold back! There were people everywhere, and we felt like we were in a cattle shed – noisy, a bit smelly, and chaotic! We didn’t stay long. It was now pouring with rain and our next stop was the Red Hill Brewery which my brother had told us to check out. Unfortunately by this stage, every man and his dog had tried to find somewhere to take cover, so we couldn’t even do a tasting. We could, however, buy a pot, so Hubs chose a stout which was really tasty!
And Nate got all fancy with the camera!

After this, we came across Montalto Vineyard and that was actually quite nice. They had basil-infused olive oil which was SO delicious (and which I’m SO going to try and make!) and the wines were lovely too.
The last winery for the day was Tucks, and we certainly ended with a goodie! I think I bought a Shiraz Rose from here that I’m looking forward to cracking open for a special occasion. Here we are at Tucks:
We met some people here who were, you guessed it, down from Brisbane for the weekend! Crazy right? AND they lived in the AUCHENFLOWER/TOOWONG area! Of course we played “who do you know” and came up with some common acquaintances. Small small world.
After this, we headed down to Sorrento for a night of roast lamb, excellent wine, great company, and a good night sleep. Ready for the next day’s adventures! To be continued….

And it’s back to the grind…

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We’re back into the swing of things after a great little break down at Sorrento over Easter. We spent our days swimming in the bay (well, I read my book on the beach – the rest of them were crazy enough to go swimming), catching up with family and friends, going for short walks (too lazy to do long walks) and Hubs worked on a contraption to assist him with taking panorama photos. I’ll let him tell you about that some time.

All in all, a very relaxing time, though I don’t feel as invigorated as I did when we returned last year. It’s been a while since I’ve been this busy, and although I LIKE being busy (especially with social engagements), I’m not used to it anymore, so it’s taking me a while to get back into my groove.

I hope everyone else had a super Easter and I’ll be filling you in on lots of interesting things very soon. As soon as they happen to me…

House-hunting

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So as you may know, Hubs and I are moving to Wangaratta in July, and we headed up last weekend to have a look around the town and get a feel for the place. And thankfully and fortunately, we love it! It has a lovely feel to it and I can really see us being happy there. We also did a bit of house hunting, as we are keen to buy there instead of renting. Why, you ask? Well, the rental prices per week are comparable to mortgage repayments on a small-ish loan. There are some houses in Wangaratta under the $200,000 mark, so we thought it would be a great opportunity to get into this “market” that I hear grown-ups talking about.

Plus, it’d be REALLY cool to have a place of our own.

Our visit gave us more of an idea of the type of house we are looking for, the areas of Wangaratta we’re interested in living in, and an idea of how we’d get around. So we’re currently looking at a few different options, doing the sums, and will hopefully come up with something in the next month or 2. It’s all very grown up and exciting!

Oh, and we’re looking at 3 bedroom homes so we can have house guests! Ever wanted to visit Wang?

We’re going to Sorrento!!

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As you may recall, Hubs and I went to Sorrento for Easter last year and had a really great holiday. Yes, that’s right, a HOLIDAY. We did nothing but read, go for walks, and bbq our meals outside. It was bliss! So you can imagine my excitement when the possibility to do it all again this year came up. We jumped at the chance! And we’ve also invited a couple of friends which will be nice.

The family is also having a memorial service for Grandad so we’ll get to say some goodbyes to old Harry. The family will be there too which will be so lovely, as we haven’t seen some of them since last Easter.

Gosh I really can’t wait!! Bring on the relaxation…