Walcott

Adelaide, South Australia

It's starting to get a little bit commonplace for me these days... this Friday night rush to get away from Sydney in order to be some place far far away, for the sake of pleasure. This Friday was certainly no different. After Virgin Blue re-scheduled flights, it meant I had about an hour to get a bus ride home, pick up sticks and jump in a cab. Not too bad - but when the cab showed up 25minutes late - the pressure was well and truly on. We did make it to check in however, and then I munched through an overdue lunch (at 6.30pm), only to find out our flights were to be delayed until the time we had originally booked them for. Thanks Virgin Blue - and yes, that line of gratitude is laced in pure sarcasm. At least we didn't get routed to another airport with a bus connection to complete the journey like the passengers in the next lounge to us got. You certainly get what you pay for when it comes to air-fares.

Enough ranting, We touched down in Adelaide, South Australia late on Friday night, with the time difference a slightly odd 30mins behind Sydney, a long day was made a tiny bit longer. I ran over the road to a bottle shop and got myself a bottle of Coopers Pale... not a new experience here, but I figured much like the "Guiness tastes better in Dublin" theory, I should do this. And I can verify, it did taste "bloody good". AFL final weekend meant there were footy fans in the hostel, which in turn meant a pretty ropey nights sleep. Regardless, we slept in past the alarm and left ourselves approximately 3minutes to throw clothes on, run some water across our faces and get outside to meet our tour bus.

Minutes later I'd managed to grab some Farmers Union Iced Coffee (a South Australian delicacy!) and a banana to stop-gap me till lunch. Our tour then took us on a meandering tour first out of the city, and then onward through the Adelaide hills. I'm sitting in my seat staring out at a landscape that conjured up images of LOTR movies and of English looking countryside. The grass was lusher than I've ever seen in Australia, the wild flowers were; well the most and brightest I've seen here and then the odd beehive littering the landscape. It all became completely Aussie once more with a sign saying "Horse-poo - $2" however.

We jumped off for our first leg stretch at a toy factory; which is also coincidentally enough home of the worlds largest Rocking Horse and some Aussie wildlife. A little underwhelmed, we headed deeper into the Barossa, past full-to-the-brim lakes (who'd know Australia has a water shortage!?).

Next stop was a man-made phenomenon; at a damn. This damn is nick-named the whispering wall and was so names way back when it was built. Workers on one side were giving their boss a bashing, who was stood on the opposite side. The acoustic properties of the damn meant sound is carried without much loss to the other side, a regular conversation can be held - it's quite unreal. Needless to say the employees were given the boot.

After this, we headed to what I personally would rate one of the best known wine brands in the world today; Jacobs Creek. Over the creek we went, a boggy little stream and soon we were in the show room of the winery. All around us vineyards and one of the most modern buildings I've seen used for the purposes of floggin crushed & matured grapes. We sample some and moved on...

We hit up 3 more wineries where we bought a few bottles, tasted maaany types of wine as well as stopped for an Aussie BBQ along side some bull rushes and a stream. The weather was perfect, and I almost thought I was back in England, in the 80'd when we had such days as this. To re-enforce this - I was also suffering the worst hayfever since my UK days too... I discovered on the way home that Rape Seed is grown locally... that beautiful yellow stuff is my kryptonite, that is, if I were Superman ;)

Most of the tour bus snoozed their way back home to Adelaide after all the wine tasting, myself included. On arrival, the two of us took a long walk from our the place we were staying to the city centre. There was surprisingly little open for a Saturday night, so we headed back to a contemporary place nearby our hostel to have dinner.

To Be Continued...

A Certain Romance

A little luxury in my own back yard, Sydney, Australia

Work was over with for another week and another escape from the day to day monotany of work was due. This time, and quite unusually, the escape would come without getting away from the city physically. More so, just emgracing the city as a tourist destination rather than a place of work.

That evening I started out my drinks at a clients site, before heading out to a pub on Jones Bay Wharf with my work colleaugues. I split from there at 8 and went to meet friends, one fresh from a year in the UK, at the Ivy lounge on George St. There we sipped drinks in the VIP section for the evening before slipping home for the weekend ahead.

After some early house hunting in the morning, I took Lauren on a mystery drive which would wind up in the Rocks at Sydney. Once she thought I was hopelessly lost, in the city I spend 8-9 hours per day, I turned in to the valet parking driveway of the Shan Gri La 5* hotel and feigned to ask for directions. Of course I just handed over the keys and proceeded to check us in.

An afternoon of freakishly high temperatures so early in spring (30+) was a great way to sit 29 floors above sea level sipping Moet and watching everyone below scuttle around Circular Quay and the Opera House.

Evening time came and we dined Al Fresco with the Opera House over Laurens shoulders, and the Harbour Bridge over mine. A lovely setting for a feed - it was just too bad they let kids in there too :P After that we headed up to the Horizon bar - something I've been meaning to do for all of my two years in Sydney; and sipped on AWESOME cocktails (at a price!) overlooking the Sydney Westerly horizon.

The following morning, we ate Brekkie at the 'La before jumping on a packed out train to Milsons Point for the start of the Annual Sydney Running Festsival. We were hopelessly late for the event we'd signed up for but luckily we were able to slip into the 9km walk. So similar to last year, where I ran - this year I strolled along with my camera to take some nifty shots of the bridge from some rare vantage points (the usually busy roads!). The day was again lovely and warm and it made for an awesome stroll taking in all of Sydneys best loved cliched tourist spots; the Botanic gardens a highlight.

With the walk over, it was time for lunch, and a very late checkout at 4pm after yet more R&R. An awesomely relaxing weekender.

Sit and Wonder

Kempsey, (Near Port Macquarie), NSW, Australia

So it is with a huge thankyou to Oren for making this blog post possible... as my fledgling photographical business makes its way along on training wheels toward a world bereft of IT technical issues (I wonder if I'll read back on this statement in five years and think either "How naive of you Luke"or "Heck yeah, go O!").

Saturday morning was again started at an early hour, as myself and Lauren jumped in a cab driven by some deaf dude who struggled to work out why we wanted to go a different way to the airport - "we're picking a third person up!" I repeated again and again... I asked if he knew MacDonalds and to turn right there, to which he asked if we were stopping... he just couldn't grasp the concept that we would be picking someone else up. Regardless, we finally got ourselves to the terminus and awaited our Qantas Link flight to Port Macquarie with Coffees, bagels and fruit salads.

We boarded a little propeller driven plane, nothing like the last 10 planes I'd been on and a rather 'difficult' stewardess shepherded us to our emergency exit seats; read us our rights in case of emergency and we were off. A noisy take-off out of a drenched Sydney airport, and we were finally amongst the clouds for the sub 1 hour trip North. Just as we started the descent, the clouds finally eased off and we saw Blue sky for the first time in days. Orens father welcomed us to the tiny airport as we awaited baggage, to be towed from the back-end of the plane to the drive way along side the terminal... we sure weren't in any kind of major city now.

We stopped off at O's place and met the family and the extended kanine family before heading to his folks's shop to start photographing product and surrounding.

It was soon time for a break, and so the 3 of us went to lunch with parents. We sat along side a muddy river, fresh from a silt influx created by the very recent storms, and ate delicious food. Some more photography carried us through the afternoon before Oren took us on a grand tour of Kempsey, encompassing South West Rocks and Crescent Head - and a lighthouse; I can't remember where! An evening of good food and wine finished off Saturday nicely.

Sunday morning, I took it upon myself to do one of my regular once monthly early wake-up calls to go photograph the sunrise. I had never had so much company as my friends Neville; Myrtle and Rani the Dalmation, followed my footsteps all over the property as I tried to spot composition in the mornings rising light. A delicious home-cooked brekkie and it was time to finish business, the last of the shots snapped before we jumped in Gregs car for the long road back to Sydney... overall an experience I would never have seen without my obsession for releasing a camera shutter. If this is the beginning of things to come, I can't wait for my future with cameras.