Canada Day in Hunter Valley

This past Sunday was Canada Day, and thanks to Andrew and Stephen, we were lucky enough to spend it in Hunter Valley on a private wine tour. Hunter Valley, Australia's oldest wine region, is located
approximately 2 hours north of Sydney. The region is home to several internationally renowned wineries such as Wyndham Estate, Lindeman's, Drayton's, and McWilliam's.

The guys put us up at the Hermitage Lodge in their Pepper Tree spa suite. The accommodations were very nice (we had a jet tub and fireplace!) and offered a great view of the Hermitage estate vineyard from our private balcony.

Pepper Tree Spa Suite

View of Hermitage Estate vineyards

Our private wine tour was with Hunter Valley Private Tours and it was an exceptionally awesome tour! We visited 4 different wineries during our tour:  Mountain View Estate, Irongate Estate, Tulloch, and Calais Estate. Several of these wineries are boutique wineries and their wines can only be purchased at their estate. Additionally, all of them source their grapes within Hunter Valley exclusively - meaning you get a true taste of Hunter Valley wine. We also visited Peterson House,which produces only sparkling wines and champagnes. This was a first for us, and we quite enjoyed it!

Our own private tour van!

Of all the wineries, Irongate Estate stood out the most for us due to its use of classical wine production methods and processes. They took their time in explaining each of the wines in detail and provided some small nibbles of food that paired very well with the wines. The owner of Irongate was also nice enough to take us on a private tour of his winery!!

Nine very tasty bottles of wine!

Inside Irongate. The largest tank is a classic Italian
style red wine tank that plunges wine.

All of the wineries in the Hunter Valley experienced a poor season this year. The high levels of rain back in January and February (right before harvest) made for over-saturated crops which, unfortunately, results in very poor red varietals. As a result, many of the wineries just leave the grapes on the vines, allowing them to fall to the ground naturally, and thereby provide nourishment for next year's crops. It was kinda neat to see shriveled up grapes (effectively raisins) still sitting on the vines.

Shriveled up Shiraz grapes

During our tour around Hunter Valley, we also stopped at the Hunter Valley Olive Center and the Chocolate Center. At the Olive Center, we were able to taste some very unique preserves and chutneys, flavour infused varieties of olive oil, and lots other tasty sauces.

Lots of tasty stuff to sample!

Sampling some olive oil

The Chocolate Center was located on site with Peterson's (champagne house). The chocolate was a nice compliment to the bubbly!

Ready for chocolate!

Inside the Chocolate Center

Half way through our wine tour, we stopped at The Muse restaurant for a fantastic lunch.  It was so delicious!  Blair had the chicken and Stacy had the brisket, which was followed up with creme brulee for dessert!

Muse Restaurant

Mmm.. Pan Friend Crusted Chicken!

Beef Brisket!

Creme Brulee

All in all, the wine tour was fantastic! Being able to sample endless amounts of wine-- all whilst knowing you have a private driver -- is the best way to tour a wine region. ;-)

On the drive back home to Canberra the next day, we stopped by Hunter Valley's only Brewery - The Hunter Beer Company.  Even though it was fairly early in the morning, we were still able to sample a few of their beers and get an overview of the history of the brewery.

Hunter Valley Beer Company! Mmmmm .. beer!

Sampling beer at 10AM - nothing wrong with that!

Well, that's all for now. We hope that everyone back in Canada had a fantastic Canada Day!

New Furniture, Vacation, and Winter Time in Canberra

Things have been pretty quiet for us the last couple of weeks (ok, that's a lie - we've been busy....lots of errand running and other boring stuff though).

We're slowly getting settled in the apartment and filling it with new furniture. So far we've purchase a new entertainment unit and TV, as well as new bedside tables and a dresser.  We've also bought a new storage cabinet in an attempt to fill up our super-sized front entrance. Our other furniture plans include purchasing a new leather couch set, but we need to wait for our insurance claim to be settled before we can do anything. Apartment pictures will come soon, we promise -- but we want to replace some of the older furniture items first.

Other than buying new furniture, we've also been busy planning our upcoming trip to Singapore, Bali, and Lombok in July  --  and a trip to The French Polynesia in August/September. Bora Bora baby!! We're hoping for some sunny weather, nice beaches, and good diving!

Intercontinental Bora Bora - The Resort We've Booked

The Overwater Bungalow that we've booked

In other news, it's officially winter in Australia. Unfortunately, while most of the country continues to enjoy average day time highs of anywhere from 18-30C during the winter, Canberra is not as fortunate. It's considered the coldest city in Australia with an average day time high usually ranging between 12-17C (We know...could be worse!). This is largely because Canberra has a high altitude, and is inward off the coast.

Seeing as how we just came from a Canadian winter that saw plenty of days below -30C, a Canberra winter feels a lot like fall weather to us. And the sun is still quite warm - warm enough that we often still need to use our air conditioning while running around town in our car. But if it wasn't for that sun....it would indeed be chilly. It's quite comical to see Aussies bundled up in boots, gloves, scarves, and big puffy jackets. Next year, once we are acclimatized to the weather, we'll probably be complaining about how cold it is outside along with everyone else. And at that point, you are more than welcome to make fun of us!

We are lucky enough to be escaping the Canberra cold weather next weekend with a trip to Hunter Valley that Andrew and Stephen planned for us.  Very much looking forward to that.  Thanks guys!!

Diving at Batemans Bay

This past weekend, we celebrated Blair's birthday by going on a dive trip to Batemans Bay. We also wanted to break-in our new scuba gear (new regulators and BCDs) before our trip to Bali and Lombok in July (i.e. our winter).

We managed to do a total of 3 dives over the weekend. Our first dive was an easy shore dive in Guerilla Bay on Friday afternoon. During the dive we saw lots of small fish and had many, many encounters with different types of sting rays. Sadly, we accidentally flooded one of our dive cameras and the other one was on the fritz so we didn't get any pictures from the dive. To make matters worse, Blair's regulator began free flowing and now needs to get repaired -- not a great start to the dive weekend.

Luckily the dives the next morning made up for all of this.  We did two boat dives with Pure Scuba. The first one was at a site called Black Rock Tunnel, which had us going through our first long tunnel at 50 feet long.  We both like going through tunnels, but let us tell you, doing one this length at a depth of 65 feet was a bit eery, particularly when it was a one-way and required us to turn around in order to get back out. 100 feet in an enclosed space like that was not really our cup of tea. The second dive that day was an easy exploration dive at a small reef.

During these dives, we saw many more sting rays, several varieties of small fish, various nudibranch, starfish, groupers, etc. The visibility was only about 20-30 feet, and the day was very overcast, so the photos didn't turn out as colourful as we had hoped. Regardless, here are a few of the pictures we took.

We used a torch (or as Canadians call it - a flashlight)
to get the colours of the starfish to pop

Fishies!

Not quite sure what fish this is...

Sea Urchins make good fish food!

An Eastern Fiddler Ray - very cool!

Another ray

Victoria Day and State of Origin

This past week we celebrated Victoria Day by going to the Canadian High Commission for a pancake and bacon picnic breakfast. There were activities scheduled for the morning such as a Canadian trivia contest and guided tours of the High Commission building. While we didn't do too well at the trivia contest (we didn't have our trivia buddies on hand to help us - you know who you are!), we did enjoy the tour of the High Commission building. Here are a few photos that we snagged of the event:

The Canadian High Commission

Victoria Day Breakfast on the back lawn

Pancakes, Bacon, and Maple Syrup!

Kids Road Hockey Game!

This past Wednesday night was the first of three State of Origin games. Blair watched the game with some Aussie friends so he could get up to speed on the rules of National Rugby League (NRL). The State of Origin games are an annual series of three NRL games between New South Wales (blue) and Queensland (maroon). The series is played strictly for bragging rights and state pride. In simple terms, it's equivalent to the all-star game (or pro-bowl) where the best players in the NRL play for the state in which they first started playing professional rugby. The series of games are among the most watch sporting games every year in Australia and New Zealand.

During the game there was a very controversial call where a Queenslander scored a try from forward contact by a New South Wales player. Without knowing the subtle variations in the rules, it's not very obvious as to why this is so controversial, but watch it for yourself to see if you can sort it out. We're looking forward to the next game (3 weeks from now), as this first game was pretty intense.  It's worth mentioning that Australia basically has three sets of rugby rules: NRL, Rugby Union (international rules), and Australia Football League (AFL). It's all very confusing, especially for someone who has never watched a game of rugby before.

(Somewhat) Moved In

As some of you are aware, shipping furniture and household effects overseas can be a lengthy process. Though we received the keys to our apartment back in mid April , our sea shipment was only delivered to the apartment on May 9th. That is a total of almost 65 days from the time the movers packed it up Ottawa.

The shipping container arriving at the apartment

The whole process of unloading the container and unpacking all the boxes was completed in just 6 hours (versus the 2 full days it took to pack and load). However, once it was all unpacked, it became obvious that we had too much stuff for the size of our apartment. That's what happens when you need to decide what to pack before knowing the new place your moving into. Luckily, once we got everything organized and put away, it wasn't as bad as it initially seemed.

Stuff everywhere! Eep!

More stuff in the office! Eek!

Unfortunately, due to Nanny's funeral, Blair wasn't able to be there for its arrival - leaving all the work for Stacy to do. Thankfully though, the cats were active participants and 'helped' out where they could.

Riley surveying the goods and taking
a mental inventory of everything

Brady making sure he's the only thing
hiding inside the packing papers

While most of our boxed stuff arrived undamaged, most of the furniture arrived loose, wobbly, scratched, or just plain broken (we're really not too concerned though as we will get to buy new stuff now!). We're currently going through the claim process with the moving company to try to get things repaired, but the process is very lengthy as its coordinated by the movers back in Canada. In the mean time, we're making the most of the situation and are setting the apartment up as best we can. Once we get through our furniture woes, we'll post some new pictures of the apartment. In the meantime, we're planning some big vacations. More to come on that soon! :-)