Newcaslte and Hunter Valley

Finally we leave Sydney and head to Newcastle for a night. Newcastle used to be a mining town, but all of the steel plants were closed down five years ago and they are currently in the process of huge re-development, kinda like what happened to Malahide Marina, but on a way bigger scale! It is a gorgeous city with some beautiful old buildings and a fantastic beach (which has sand that makes the weirdest 'nails on a blackboard' noise when you walk on it!) We arrived in Newcastle at approx 3.30pm. The YHA hostel here is fabulous. It used to be a gentlemens club (the clean kind). The lounge area had lovely leather sofas and a big open fireplace, perfect for relaxing, which is all we did that night. We went for a free dinner in MJ Finnegans Irish pub (gross food!) and also played in a pool comp which was a bit of a laugh.

We set off for the Hunter Valley bright and early the next morning. The weather was beautiful, such a blessing! Our first winery was the Mount Pleasant Winery. We tasted 12 wines here and this was all before 11am! They really had some gorgeous wines and I think out of all of the wineries we went to, this was our favourite. This was helped by a really cute guy being our assistant! Next it was onto Lindemans, which we all know. The guy here was not the nicest, but that didn't stop us from enjoying the wine! We only had about 6 wines here, but they also had fudge!! We tasted loads and bought 2 different ones - Yummy!!

Our 3rd winery was McGuigans, which also had some lovely ones but they can't be bought abroad unfortunately. Next it was onto Draytons and we have to say that we weren't impressed with these, but that could also be the fact that we had had so much at this stage that we could hardly distinguish between them! It was time for some much needed lunch after this so we went to the Hunter Village and had massive burgers which sobered everyone up and it was still only 12.30pm!!

We went to 2 more wineries after lunch: Brokenwood and then the Golden Grape Estate. the latter also specialised in liquers and we had lots of these!! The most interesting one was definitely the chili schnapps which burns the insides out of you for about an hour after taking it!!

This was such a brilliant day and is well worth doing. It cost us $45, for 7 hours and at least 2.5 bottles of wine each. Now you can't argue with that!!

We cooked dinner in the hostel that eveing (no more crappy food for us!).We met a chef in the kitchen who was mixing up a concoction of chicken, eggs and Portugese chicken flavouring! All we'll say is that we were glad we weren't paying for it in a restaurant!

That night we got on a Greyhound to Byron Bay - an 11hr drive - YUCK!!!