Blog Day 399 - Saturday 01 May 2021 (May Day)

After an exciting few days in the Hunter Valley I am heading back south towards home.  I am typing this having a beer in the public bar of the Mallacoota hotel which is also my accomodation for the night.  Beautiful day here, 24 degrees and clear blue skies.

I left the Hunter yesterday morning and drove to Ulladulla for an overnight stop.  Apart from spending an hour in a traffic jam on the M1 north of Sydney and getting caught in the school pick up traffic and the people getting away for the weekend traffic it wasn't a bad trip.

I left Ulludulla at 9.00 am for the 320 kilometre drive to Mallacoota and arrived here at about 1.30pm in the afternoon.  Checked into the hotel and had a walk around the town and took some photos along the waterfront.  It is too hard to transfer photos from my camera to my tablet so I will post some photos when I get home and can use my PC.

The only problem this morning on my journey south was the bloody caravans, really, they should be banned.  Some old geezer with a $80,000 caravan and a $100,000 four wheel drive with all the gear in the world is driving down the highway hunched over the wheel like he is driving a London bus and oblivious to the mile of traffic behind him.  Either oblivious or doesn't care.  Then you get past that particular geezer and there is another one in front of him.  

Anyway, enough of my whinging.  I had a great few days in the Hunter Valley.  I met up with my friends from Cairns, Flashy and Lady P and two other couples from Cairns and Mission Beach.  Flashy's neice came along as designated driver of the hired bus.

Flashy and Lady P had rented a house on a winery with plenty of room for all.  The house was surrounded by grape vines and olive trees and overlooked by a massive escarpment.  During the late afternoon some kangaroos would come graze on the grass around the olive trees.  It was very pleasant sitting around the outdoor table having late afternoon drinks taking in the scenery and the good company.

We spent the days touring various wineries in close proximity to our accomodation and lunches and dinners either out at restaurants or back at our accomodation.  There are literally hundreds of wineries in the Hunter ranging from the large well known brands to ones that you have never heard off, so the hard part was choosing the ones to visit and the ones that we didn't have time to visit.  Although some made the visitor and tasting exeperience better than others overall they tried very hard to make us feel welcome.

On our last afternoon the winery that we were staying on put on a bit of a tour of the vineyard and winery and explained some of the finer points of wine making.  After the tour we had a tasting at the winery sitting out in the late afternoon sun, very pleasant.

We had fantastic weather and like most wine growing areas the Hunter valley is very scenic.  

I am driving to Lakes Entrance tomorrow and will be back in Melbourne on Monday.

Just started my second schooner of Stella so might call it day, for the blog at least.