Hunter Valley

A weekend away in the huge Hunter Valley wine-making area, with Andrew from Rory's work and his girlfriend Michelle. Poor Mr Bump had to stay at home so we had to go by toot-toot tour bus instead.



Got of to a flying start on the first day by thoroughly exploiting the free wine-tasting at a whole bunch of wineries. In between we raided a cheese place for lunch, had a little tour of a winery and rounded it off with a visit to the Blue Tongue Brewery to settle everything down with a nice beer.

A slow start on Sunday soon kicked into gear with a session of hitting golf balls into a lake in a bid to win prizes. Sadly Caz's muscles are still recovering from this 'exercise'. After a quick cheese stop we went to a posh winery that looked like a James Bond baddie's evil lair with a cheesy guitarist on the porch. Before his first sip of wine Rory rolled down a hill and smashed a wine glass in the posh wine-tasting bar. Can't take him anywhere

Living in Sydney

Right then, in case you've been wondering where we are... we've been in Sydney since new year, where we've found decent jobs and a wee flat-type place to stay in. We've having a great time and been up to all kinds of stuff which you can see below...

We're planning to hang around here for a while yet, so we can save up enough to visit Tasmania and then travel up the east coast to round off our Aussie travels......

Mr Bump loses his honour

Stop the press, Mr Bump's number plates have been stolen! Some scurvy scum has nicked off with the plates and buggered up our plans for the weekend. Thankfully, its fairly easy to get some new ones, except that our car's registed in Western Australia, so we have to get stuff sent from over there, grrr! Here's Rory giving the number plates a wistful look when we were at Uluru in November.

Last Sunday (probably while the plates were being unscrewed) we joined a mass walk (trespass?) over the Sydney Harbour Bridge to celebrate its 75th birthday. It was like when everyone crosses Tower Bridge in the London marathon (the skies were grey enough) but with no running involved. Look at those crazy crazy hats... it was wild!

Harbour Bridge trivia: 17 people died in its construction, but only 2 from falling off the bridge. This is surprising cos they didn't have any safety gear and just cavorted around on the bridge with only a trilby hat and pipe for protection. Most died from things falling on them. Two people also survived falling from the bridge. The design of the bridge was more or less copied from one in America.
Caroline saw Take That perform in Martin Place on a breakfast TV show, a lifelong ambition fulfilled!







Dennis, the IT guy from my work, has now got a dream job at the Lowenbrau brewhouse, so we had to celebrate with a rigorous quality control tasting session, 1 litre at a time.

Oh and one last thing - go and see the movie Hot Fuzz, you won't regret it.