Monday, April 22, 2013

Hunter Valley Winery Weekend

Wyatt gave me a weekend out at the vineyards for my birthday.  We headed out to Pokolbin in Hunter Valley on the Friday and stayed for the two days.  It's such a beautiful place and there's so many vineyards to choose from.  We ended up drinking too much wine and eating too much cheese but we had a great time.  The weather was on our side with sun and blue skies and we returned home with 10+ bottles of wine!

Thanks Wyatt for a great weekend! 


a little lake by our hotel
the biggest dissapointment, the outdoor spa was out of order:(




Beer testing to change it up a bit!







Plenty to choose from





Thursday, April 11, 2013

Wollemi part 2

Some more pictures from our Easter getaway!


building a mud wall 







Wyatt went poking around and found a nest of Huntsman spiders

lamb chops bbq



an old aborigional site





Monday, April 8, 2013

Wollemi

We had a lovely Easter out in Wollemi National Park,  more exactly at a place called Hefrons Hole bordering on the park.  We spend 4 very relaxing days with Quintin, Sal, little Harry, Solomon the dog and Sals parents Rob and Mary.  It's such a quiet beautiful spot.  No mobile phone coverage, no TV and no Internet.  It's scary how much you rely on the above and you realise that you can olny truly wind down without them.

Sal's parents bought this big piece of land in the 70's together with three other partners so there's three other little cottages and houses in the area. They've built the cottage themselves out of big rocks and a mix of sand, clay, cement and water.  Really impressive and very artistic with glass bottles incooperated into the walls for light and looks! A lot of the parts are recycled material with old church windows and a big aluminium window from Sweden:)

We spent the days hiking, relaxing, helping to build a wall structure for a little guest cottage and trying to spot some wildlife.  It didn't take very long getting used to the outhouse (utedass) and the shower with almost no water pressure,  although it was a bit scary with old dead spiders decorating the walls of the outhouse when you looked down... The house has solar panels for electricity and you think twice about using too much electricity or water.  It makes you realise how much we waste in our daily life between long hot showers, running taps, lots of lights on, tv:s, laptops...etc...

Here's some pictures.  We took loads as you can imagine, so we'll try to upload some more in another post.


the outhouse




looking out over the fenced in vegtable and fruit garden



bonfires at night



the fantoms head, can you spot it?

marshmellows!