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I knew our visit to the Hunter Valley was going to be a roaring success when we were twenty minutes late picking up our rental car. The impending success of our trip was confirmed when we had to drive for three hours - at night - in the most appalling weather I’d ever driven in. This had all the makings, as my Dad would say, of a trip whose defining characteristic was “memorable”. “Memorable” not necessarily being synonymous with “good”, of course.

We arrived at our hotel tired and stressed from three hours of being dragged in the wake of million-wheeled Australian roadtrains.

The Hunter Valley is one of Australia’s largest wine-producing regions, so we did what any self-respecting tourists would, and drank. Every winery in the area has a cellar door, which in theory is somewhere you can buy discounted bottles. In reality, of course, every cellar door has a free tasting bar, which is a little like a wine bar, only with more tourists in shorts, chattier bar staff, and no bill to pay at the end. True, you have to consume your wine in shots rather than glasses, but with dedication, it’s possible to get pleasantly trollied.

The weather was atrocious. We chose our hotel on the grounds that it was possible to walk to half a dozen wineries from our front door, but the reality was that walking outdoors for more than five minutes carried with it a very real risk of drowning. Our umbrella was turned inside out by the breeze and our coats were turned into sails by the wind. It was an appalling day for photography, incidentally. I’ve already treated my precious 350D to enough mistreatment, so it was kept safely in a bag lest it fill with water again.

Still, most wineries have cheese shops and fudge factories (is that the right term?) attached. I’m not sure what it is about wine that makes me also want bitter chocolate and strong cheese, but what a wonderful happening that all three exist in free, nibble-sized chunks right next to each other.

We got pleasantly trollied, and were surprised to find, when we arrived back at our hotel, that we’d brought with us two bottles of wine and a port. Those, I suppose, are the breaks of drunken wine tasting.

We did at least do the right thing. Here’s a word of advice for those on the way to the Hunter Valley: drive. There were tourist buses everywhere, and I couldn’t think of anything worse than being coralled through a tasting session and rushed to another winery. Take your time. Allow me to recommend, for instance, the Leisure Inn, which was fronted by a preposterously grumpy woman, but won us over with its private chalets, semi-self-catering and - get this - in-room hot tubs.

Stay the night. Get pissed. There’s nothing worse than being shepherded into a bus for a two hour journey when you’re wrecked. I’m a journalist. I know.

Almost as if the weather knew our weekend was almost over, the sun bounded over the hills the next morning. Blue skies, birds singing, that kind of thing. We knocked back coffee and pastries in the hotel restaurant (arrange a late checkout at the Leisure Inn, by the way), and then saw - wait for it - kangaroos. This shouldn’t be much of a shock. They are, after all, everywhere in Australia. But I’d like you to imagine for a moment that you’re a British tourist. Your first time out of a major city in Australia and there they are. The furry, bounding talisman of a continent right in front of you, acting for all the world as if it’s no big deal.

Which it isn’t, of course, but people get excited when they see wild boar in the New Forest, so our excitement was justified. There was even a joey.

We took the scenic road back, an almost surreally quiet selection of winding backroads with four lanes and no traffic. We curved our way through the countryside, past wooden houses whose nearest neighbours we had swished past twenty minutes ago. We were in ludicrously good moods. We drove slowly and pulled aside to let faster traffic through, in an unconscious homage to my Grandad.

It took twice as long for us to arrive back in Sydney. That, of course, is the problem when you pull off the road every five minutes. Back, we spent a ludicrous amount of time distraughtly searching for the car rental place, including an enjoyable fifteen minute spell in the wrong multi-story carpark.

But still, you should try it. The Hunter Valley, that is. Not abandoning a rental car in the wrong car park.

Links

Flickr set
The Hunter Valley
The Wine Front

Dave has just about figured out the vagaries of lightboxes and blip.tv video. If you think something’s gone awfully wrong, please leave a comment. Also, this week we bought self-inflating sleeping mats.