Category: Trips

Day 13: What's that glowing yellow thing in the sky?

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Finally, a warm sunny day in Sydney! Unbeknownst to us we were at the tail end of what would later be named the coldest first half of October in Sydney in 45 years. But on this day it was sunny, and we decided to bask.

We drove over to Mosman with the top down, in search of some breakfast. It took us a few tries to find a place still serving breakfast at noon, but we did, and it was excellent, and right on the beach. We went for a stroll down said beach afterwards, where Nellie once again got soaked by a wave. This was becoming a pattern.

We drove back home — still avec open-top — and chilled, just watching the new Blu-Ray Star Wars. Side note: George Lucas needs to stop fucking with his best shit. Han shot…simultaneously?

We had plans to meet up with some friends of the brother for dinner. We took the train down to King’s Cross to scoff at the ridiculousness, then hit the Old Fitzroy for pre-dinner drinks. Their music selection led me to opine as to the best American (classic) rock band ever. I put forward CCR; others disagreed. Much debate ensued. Good beer + music geekery? It was uncertain I’d ever leave.

But leave we did, for dinner at Cafe DOV. We met up with the brother’s friends, discovered the secret path to the washroom, and nearly broke a camera. My dinner was good; everyone else’s was — reportedly — fantastic. Dessert was superb, though I can’t for the life of me remember what it was. Note to self: write these things down. Another of the brother’s friends joined us late, and came with us when we returned to the Old Fitzroy rather than be guestlisted into what seemed an extraordinarily douchey club. Even the pub had gotten quite out of hand by this point — Aussies like to dress up for parties apparently, even if they’re offensive…we saw a Hitler and an Arab suicide bomber — so we had just the one and buggered off home to pack for the next morning’s flight.

Day 12: Tea party & pork

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I really thought my calves would be better the next today. Man, was I wrong. I think they got worse. I was stepping rather gingerly.

My brother had arranged for a harbour cruise thingy, so we went back to Circular Quay and met our ride. The water was pretty choppy and we weren’t sure how well we’d fare, but everything turned out fine. In any case we were only headed to Goat Island, right there in the harbour, for a bit of history. It was fairly interesting, but the poor tour company employee’s routine was marred by the unexpected appearance of the Kids Crazy Island Tea Party. Seriously. It was hilarious and awful at the same time. Here he was trying to recount the interesting and oft-bloody history of 19-century Sydney while standing in front of the Lindt Teddy Bear’s Picnic. He did his best but you could tell he was getting pissed off.

After leaving the island the boat went on a longer ride around the harbour. The rest of the group sat inside and listened to trivia; Nellie and I walked out to the front of the ship, stood on the bow and enjoyed the sights. It was grey and a little cool outside, but we loved it. It felt like we were in Halifax for a minute. Except for a few key landmarks.

We went back home, got changed, then jumped back on the train downtown to stake out a spot at Porteno. It’s a very popular spot in Surry Hills. How popular? Well, we got there ten minutes before it opened and we were about twentieth in line to get in. Because our entire party wasn’t there we waited upstairs in the bar. Nellie had single malt; I had a pork slider and some kind of delicious bourbon, vermouth and smoked maple syrup concoction. The rest of the party showed up and downstairs we went. We didn’t bother with anything fancy: just two giant plates of slow-roasted meat and some wine to go with it. Us: pork. Them: lamb. It was SOOOOOOO GOOOOOOOOOOOOD. The place was very cool too…very Spanish/South American vibe.

We left, stopped at a drive-through beer store (seriously!) and somehow, once home, drank another four bottles of wine between us. What a day.

Day 11: Back to the land of proper beer

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Ow ow yiggity yow. That was the sound our legs made the day after that hike. I guess we didn’t stretch enough to prepare for the 2000+ steps we faced. Either way, Nellie’s knees and my calves were entirely unhappy with us. So it made walking a bit of a ginger exercise.

We ate breakfast and caught a train back to Sydney (more crazy people on this train; pro tip for traveling to the Blue Mountains: take earplugs) needing to find a way to kill most of a day until we could meet up with the brother. We stashed our bags at a storage company and took the train down to Circular Quay once again. We spent an hour or so at the tiny Museum of Sydney, then killed a few hours back at Harts Pub. My brother was nice enough to come pick us up, collect our bags and take us to The Local Taphouse, reportedly one of the best beer bars in Sydney. Our beers were, indeed, all quite tasty, as was my excellent pizza (note: it was only while typing all these blog posts that I realized just how much wood-fired pizza I’d been eating on this trip) and everyone else’s food. Top marks to The Local.

We left there and had a drink at some basement bar, Downtown at the Commons, and then zoomed home on the train. We went no further as the next day brought work for the brother and a harbour cruise for us, and it wouldn’t do to be hung over for either.

Day 10: Leap et canyon

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Our B&B did a very good &B, giving us full bellies as we prepared for a day of hiking. We began the long walk along Govett’s Leap Road to the lookoff, and were rewarded with some spectacular views. The Blue Mountains aren’t really mountains;  they’re a plateau with valleys that were carved out over millennia.


We decided to follow the trail along (roughly) the edge of the valley, heading up and down hills to occasionally emerge at a number of superb lookoffs, eventually reaching Evan’s Lookout.


Interesting note: nearly everyone we encountered on the trail was French. Not sure why that was, but my brother said it was much the same when he visited the Blue Mountains. Even one of the two couples at our B&B was French. Weird. Anyway…having completed a supposedly 90-minute hike in 60 minutes, we were feeling confident that we could do the moderately difficult “grand canyon” hike. The only elements which gave us pause were Nellie’s knees — the perils of short legs — and the probably-insufficient water we carried with us. Still, we thought we’d give it a shot, and descended into the canyon. We knew it would be one of the few opportunities we’d ever have to descend from the top of the canyon wall down to the floor and back out again.

We were hot at first — it was the first hot, sunny day we’d had in/around Sydney since arriving — but cooled down as we got to the valley floor. We began criss-crossing the stream, climbing over slippery rocks and fallen trees. We walked through a tunnel in the rock, ate lunch in front of a waterfall and then hiked behind it, looked up and saw innumerable streams of water dripping over the canyon walls and onto our faces.


Finally, after nearly two hours, we began the long ascent out of the canyon. Something strange happened on the way up, something we were barely witnesses to and so have trouble describing. As we walked we heard a number of birds sing strange songs. Urgent songs, we realized later, because suddenly — just above our heads — we heard an incredible rustling. We looked up and saw a small tree being shaken violently. I saw a reptilian head extending from a rock outcropping and into a huge bird’s nest; Nellie saw a tail. It took us a few seconds to register than we were watching a very large lizard eat a bird, or perhaps a bird’s egg. I did see more tail feathers peek out from a neighbouring nest, in what seemed like a defensive position, but no further action occurred. Of course, it happened so quickly that neither of us got a camera out and up, but a little googling later on led us to believe that we’d seen a goanna attack the nest. Excitin’!

We spent the next half hour or so ascending, getting warmer, and getting thirstier. We emerged in a cark park well south of Blackheath, thinking it would be a short walk back. We drained our water and started hiking. After half an hour we were still nowhere near our B&B and were considering hitchiking. Suddenly an SUV pulled up and asked if we needed a lift. A very, very, very nice Scottish lady named Mary gave us a ride into Blackheath, telling us we weren’t the first poor souls she’d rescued after hiking the canyon. At least we didn’t knock on her door asking for water or to us the toilet, as many others had! So, three cheers for Scottish Mary. We raised a glass to her that night.

Our dinner was pizza and pasta made at a place around the corner, along with the truly excellent Cabernet Sauvignon we’d gotten from Knee Deep the previous weekend. Then home we did go, to rest our weary bones.

Day 9: Into the blue

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We took our time on this morning, needing only to catch a noon-ish train. We re-packed for a two-day trip and walked to the train station.

Once we’d cleared the city and gotten into some nice scenery the train ride to the Blue Mountains was quite enjoyable, despite the presence of some fantastically annoying and obnoxious kids in our car. We checked into our B&B, the Glenella Guesthouse, and explored Blackheath…which took all of five minutes.

We had a very tasty lunch at a little place called the Wattle Cafe, and went back to our room to relax, have a nap, plan hikes for the next day and generally enjoy a pleasant day on our veranda with the bottle of Swooping Magpie Shiraz we’d picked up in the Margaret River.

Our dinner options were quite limited that night, as most restaurants in Blackheath close during the week, so we ended up at a trattoria down the road. It wasn’t swish, but it was simple and hearty and tasty and our server was fun. He also claimed to have made half a million creme brulées in his life, so we had to put him to the test. I’m happy to report that we had no reason to refute him.

Day 8: Transit

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This day wouldn’t really amount to much. Between the three hours’ drive back to Perth (during which I slept, mostly, missing the beach we stopped at on the way), a five hour flight to Sydney and a three hour time difference, the day was all but gone once the transportation ended. A quick batch of pasta and we were all off to bed.

Day 7: The odyssey

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So, kangaroos were a pretty common sight now. They lounged all over the villa’s grounds in the mornings when we awoke, gnawing on grass, just like the sheep. Roos + sheep: it was confirmed, we were most definitely in Australia.

We started our day at a nearby beach, watching the waves crash into the western shore and taking a bit of a stroll. We very definitely saw a whale that day, breaching and blowing just off the shore, on a common migration route back to cooler waters.


We drove into the town of Yallingup itself for coffee and some bacon sandwiches. There we again saw waves crashing, and saw several people riding them — Yallingup being very much a surfing town. But surfing, whales and bacon be damned, today was about wine!

We visited eight wineries (!) in total:

  • Swings & Roundabouts, where they were very nice but we didn’t buy anything
  • Clairault, which looked stuffy but wasn’t (but we still didn’t end up buying anything)
  • Laurance, for which we had such high hopes after our Cab Sauv two nights previous but which was, in the end, terribly poncy and not very good at all in the wine department
  • Knee Deep, a very pleasant, friendly and proficient winery where we purchased a wonderful Cab Sauv and would have eaten lunch if we could have
  • Woodlands, which he happened into completely by accident but which ended up being maybe the find of the trip replete with charm, friendliness and a happy dog, and from which we took a spectacular Pinot Noir
  • The Growers, actually a consortium of several small producers which offered lots of wine at incredibly reasonable prices, though nothing quite remarkable enough to take home
  • Deep Woods, in which we met a lovely Belgian gentleman who spoke BBC-perfect English and who, quite generously, offered us a nearly-full bottle of Cab Sauv to take home for dinner
  • Swooping Magpie, our final (thank goodness!) stop of the day, where we had our favourite Shiraz of the trip to date, taking a bottle with us

In between cellar doors we stopped at Bootleg Brewery for an excellent sampler of beer, and returned to Swings & Roundabouts for a lunch of wood-fired pizzas on their outdoor patio. This, incidentally, was the first time during our first week in Australia that we had warm, sunny weather.


Earlier in the afternoon we’d decided to have a simple dinner back in the cottage, and so we picked up lots of meat, cheese, bread, pate and produce to go with all the wine we now needed to drink rather than carry it back on the plane.

You can’t see the many bottles of wine but trust me, they’re there.

Day 6: Lake Cave, two sheds, Stella Bella, warm breads

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Before we began the day’s wine tastings we decided to expore another of the area’s features: caves. We drove to the southern end (more or less) of the region and booked in at Lake Cave. We had a little time to kill before getting started so we tried zooming down the road to Eagle Vale, but they weren’t open.

The cave itself was better than I expected. It wasn’t cheesy and, as the name suggests, featured a small lake on the floor of the cave. We had an interesting tour, saw some beautiful underground sights, even spent a few moments in complete darkness. It was a worthwhile visit, even though we had to climb some 300+ steps on the way out.

Our first winery of the day wound up being Redgate, which was okay. They were sold out of the Cab Franc that we’d wanted to try, but we picked up a very nice Chenin.

By this time our rummies were tumbling, so we stopped in the actual town of Margaret River for lunch at Must. It was very good — the brother claimed his burger was one of the best he’d ever had — but it took a long time. Not that we were on a tight timeline or anything, though, so we didn’t particularly care.

We hit four wineries in quick succession after lunch:

  • Watershed, which had a beautiful building and where we picked up a very decent Zinfandel
  • Howard Park, which had a serious reputation but which I found extremely haughty and disappointing (even so Nellie picked up a Moscato)
  • Hayshed, which was a hundred times friendlier and tastier and where we picked up a superb K+B Cabernet Sauvignon which is on the ‘take-back-to-Canada’ list
  • Stella Bella, a favourite of the brother’s and, now, of ours. We ended up ordering a case from them, six for the brother and six for us: two Cab Sauv, two Sauv Blanc and two sweet dessert wines. I don’t know what we’ll do with them all, but at least two of them are coming back to Canada with us. Here’s Nellie’s scoring system from the tasting sheet. No, we couldn’t understand it either.

It was late afternoon by this point, and we decided we needed more of that fresh bread. We returned to the bakery and saw people literally hugging their bread as they walked to their car. One gentleman was so hungry he began biting chunks off the bread cradled in his arms while walking to his car. After we picked up our loaves, Nellie took a page from his book and ripped into the white bread just as he had done. The bread would not be denied.

We were a little too tired for a giant meal, and the first place we called was booked up anyway, so we visited a nearby wine bar and had tapas. Decent food, and blessedly small. The weather turned foul on the way home — lightning and heavy rain — so there was naught to do but hunker down and plan the next day’s visits.

Day 5: To the wine!

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We returned to Tart, the previous night’s restaurant, for a coffee to fuel our drive south, toward the Margaret River. Within a few minutes of leaving Perth, the view turned far more countryside-y than anything we’d seen so far. We even saw kangaroos in the distance, though not nearly close enough for Nellie’s liking. We stopped off in Bunbury to see their beach and pick up supplies, and in Busselton to see their beach and ginormous jetty.



After leaving Busselton we drove up to the Eagle Bay Brewing Company, where we enjoyed great food, tremendous beer and amazing views.


Our first winery stop of the day was Wise Vineyards, just down the road from our lunch spot. It too featured incredible views, and was hosting a couple of weddings. We picked up a bottle of Verdelho, which was quite decent, and debated as to whether we’d seen a whale breaching in the distant Indian Ocean.

We then arrived at our heretofore-secret accommodations: the Wildwood Valley Villa. We had a nice 3-bedroom cabin to ourselves with a proper kitchen, grill, deck, etc. tucked into the rolling hills just outside Yallingup: a perfect base from which to launch our excursions.


Our host gave us the lay of the land, suggested restaurants for dinners and — perhaps most importantly — told us about a local bakery adored by locals and which would be producing bread fresh from their ovens in just twenty minutes. Fresh hot bread? Allons-y! We jumped in the car and headed that way with all speed, slowing only when we got a close-up of some roos hopping alongside the car.


The bakery was hard to find, but was swarmed by cars of people coming to get the bread. We took a sourdough loaf for later and a fruit loaf for breakfast and drove home to nap and strategize before dinner.


Our dinner that evening was at Studio Bistro. Because of the large lunch, constant snacking and tired bones none of us felt quite up to the gastronomic (read: tasting) menu, though it looked fantastic. Still, all our meals were excellent, and the red I randomly selected from the list — a Cab Sauv from Laurance — earned the winery a spot on our must-visit list over the next two days.

That was enough excitement for one day, so we drove home and crashed hard.

Day 4: Our new nicknames are Floaty & Tart

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Ultra-touristy or no, we decided that we had to see the Sydney Aquarium. So we shlepped downtown again, paid our gazillion dollars, steeled our nerves for the onslaught of screaming children and ventured in. Afore-mentioned screaming children and rude tourists aside, I was actually quite happy with what I saw. There were lots of crazy fish and crabs (especially spider crabs…I would not want to see one of those suckers coming at me), but the best part was where you went underwater to see the sharks and huge rays and dugong and sea turtles. Speaking of sea turtles, one of them was named Floaty. She was cute. Also cute: little kids freaking out every time they saw a fish that looked like Nemo or Dory.

We were getting hungry (and, yes, thirsty) by this point so we walked a few minutes to the Redoak boutique beer cafe, and once again were not disappointed. Their wheat beer was one of the best I’ve ever had, and the bock and porter were nice as well. It all went well with the sausage and mash (as did Nellie’s three — Oktoberfest, wheat and organic lager — with her roast beef sandwich) and we left full, once again. We decided to end the day’s adventures there; it was time to head home and get ready for our flight to Perth.

We made it to the airport with plenty of time, except that a) a corkscrew had accidentally been packed in my bag (which security was not cool with) and b) they boarded the flight much earlier than most Virgin Blue flights, so we ended up being among the last passengers to board. No matter; we got on, and we were on our way following a seat change due to Nellie’s malfunctioning TV screen. And by ‘malfunctioning’ I mean that it literally fell out of the seat back in front of her when she touched the screen. And so: off to the west coast of Australia, and the delicious wine therein!

Once we arrived we picked up our rental car and drove to our hotel, having decided to spend the night in Perth rather than drive to the Margaret River in the dark. There was some minor trouble with the law, and I’ll save my comments about the hotel for Tripadvisor, but we did have a very nice meal next door at a place called Tart. So that helped improve the evening somewhat.