After we arrived in Australia, we stayed in Sydney to get a good night’s sleep before picking up our rental car and driving to Pokolbin in the Hunter Valley for wine tasting. The car we ended up getting was a Subaru Crosstrek so I felt right at home! Well except for driving on the other side of the road. The car was like they were in Japan – the windshield wipers and turn signals were on opposite sides from what they are at home. So we turned on the windshield wipers more than once when we were intending to signal a turn (in Japan we called it the “Yokota salute” – I was told they call it the “Australian salute” here lol).
We chose to take the Sydney Harbour Bridge and pay the toll just for the experience of driving across it. It was a pretty easy drive and we stopped at a few places on the way before arriving at our “hotel” – the Grapevine Boutique Accommodation (https://grapevines.com.au). I say hotel in quotes because it really was a cozy, small place with only a handful of villas – we had a studio villa that had a kitchenette and there was a nice shared seating area with a grill and an amazing view!
Once we got settled in, we popped out to the Aldi to pick up some groceries for the couple days we were there. We had our cheese and crackers dinner on our mini patio then enjoyed some wine in the shared grill area – we met a couple from Germany (but they live on a boat in New Zealand most of the time!) and another very nice couple from about an hour away from where we were staying. We saw our first kangaroo that night! Only 1 on the property and a few far out in a field but the Australian couple told us to get up early to see them. Since we were still pretty jet lagged and awake at 5am anyway, that worked out well!
We were both up just before 5am (without even setting an alarm) so we got out of bed to have coffee out on the deck to check out the sunrise and hopefully see some kangaroos. And wow! We were not disappointed! The sunrise was beautiful and there were a ton of kangaroos right on the property. If you look closely in that first sunrise picture, you’ll see a small speck. It’s not dirt on your computer screen – it’s a hot air balloon! Was fun to see them take off.
The kangaroos were out near the hedges at the edge of the lawn so we carefully got closer but kept a good distance away. They were watching us watch them which was pretty cute. We also saw a couple of them sparring a little bit too.
We eventually had to go inside and get changed to go for our planned excursion. We rented bikes from Grapemobile (https://www.grapemobile.com.au) and then had wine tastings scheduled at Horner Wines (https://www.hornerwines.com.au), Calais Estate Winery (https://www.calaiswines.com.au; where we also had lunch with a view of the vineyard), Moorebank Vineyard (https://moorebankvineyard.com.au), and Pokolbin Brothers (https://www.pokolbinbrothers.com.au) – the last of which was the same place as the bike rental.
These wineries were all pretty close to each other along a gravel path that was ideal for the bikes (every other place we found had electric bikes – this was the only place that also had conventional bikes). Glen at Grapemobile is all the things – he was out in the vineyard working when we got there, he does the bike rentals, and he runs the winery! He also provided great recommendations for wineries so that we could book the tastings in advance. It was a beautiful location and we had great views of the vineyard plus the valley itself as we rode.
As we rode along the path, we noticed a kangaroo crossing sign – and as luck would have it the kangaroos read the sign and we saw some right along that path where the sign was!
We also saw a bunch of these purple-flowered trees that I loved – I looked it up and they are Jacaranda trees (I kept forgetting the name until Chris started making up a song about them to the tune of Help Me Rhonda … and I think it’s been stuck in my head ever since!). It turns out they are native to Central and South America and the jacaranda seeds were thought to have been brought over by sea captains from those areas.
After we finished our tastings we made our way back to Grapemobile/Pokolbin Brothers Winery to drop off the bikes and have our final tasting with Glen.
It was a great way to see the area and taste local wines. The next morning we woke up early again and were rewarded with a beautiful sunrise again – and even MORE kangaroos! Including one momma with a joey that was probably past outgrowing his pouch. I probably took like 50 pictures and quite a few video just of them. At one point he was hanging out of her pouch eating the grass and he fell out! I managed to catch it on video – he promptly scrambled to climb back in. It was pretty cute – but I think he might have been a failure to launch situation and I’m sure momma was ready to eject him! Somehow she still moved so gracefully with all that weight.
We eventually had to go pack up the car and head back to Sydney. We decided to take the “no tolls” route back – less than a 20 min difference and a pretty big difference in cost! ($27 AUD is about $17.5 USD). Thought it was crazy but in the end I think we got stuck in way more traffic on the no tolls route as it routed us through random neighborhoods. You live and learn. Next time we’ll take the toll road!
We made it back to Sydney safe and sound. That last 10 miles ended up taking around 45 minutes – we were very happy to drop off the rental car and be done with driving! Spend a few days in Sydney once we got back …. more to come on that!
