a blog about six weeks of lurking australia: Not the Merlot

Presently in Sydney, staying at Nicola's share house in Leichardt. Nic is at work at her local pub, cazz and i just cooked dinner and now we are about to lose all dignity dying our hair shades of blonde. She is back in Melbourne next week so she will have to face being laughed at while i will be hiding on the other side of the country for the next month. Silly Cazz. Nicola's flatmate that she doesn't like is practicing his claronette, it's a comical backdrop.

This blog post, however, is about our journey to newcastle and our day there with lisa and nelson. We arrived just before 10pm in new castle and were met by lisa and nelson and the train station. The 10 hour bus trip was unpleasant, after our night at cheeky monkeys we were feeling a little bit under teh weather. plus we missed the shuttle bus from the arts factory into town so we had to run in the heat with our packs on. cazz was wearing her pleather and felt nauseous for ages after.

As we were running Helena and Nir passed us by on their bus to Nimbin. we were sad to see them go and a bit sad that we weren't making it to nimbin. The greyhound usually stops every couple of hours for snacks but that day we went nearly four before we were allowed to stop off for food. When we finally got to the truck stop place cazz got a pie and i ordered a burger. we wolfed that all down and then i ordered a pie and cazz ordered a burger. being a slow eater i didnt have time to finish my pie and had to throw it out. soul destroying.

When we finally arrived so many hours later we were looking forward to a tea and a chat with anybody else. But bloody lisa and nelson provided much much more. we walked into the house to the smell of a roast chicken and vegetables. then there was apple pie and custard for desert. Nelson is a big master chef fan. caroline and i appreciated that, a lot. They offered us their bed, but we could not accept, so we slept on blow up mattresses and sleeping bags on teh living room floor. Lisa played the digeridoo for us, surprisingly good.

the next morning we hired a car and drove out to the hunter valley for wine tasting as nelson thought this was the best way to spend a day around new castle.

we paid $5 for an hour long tour at one of the vineyards, forget the name. overall we drank far too much. had to have numerous snack stops. we packed so much food in the back of the car and ate almost all of it. at the last vineyard we stopped at we discovered outrageously cheap massive bucket things of port. apparently some uni student had been buying it, packaging it and selling ti for huge profits at the uni. also popular amongst fishermen apparently.

We wanted to make sushi that night for dinner after seeing some of the wines saying that they go well with sushi and whetting our appetites. but the fishmonger said it wasnt sushigrade so we had to choose something else. natural resort back to pasta and garlic bread. but lisa caramelised bananas and we had sticky date pudding sara lee ice cream which was so yum.