Leaving Sydney / Hunter Valley Wine Tour

Lee was still at work on Wednesday and since I'd given David a quick tour of the city I felt it was about time I took him over to Bondi for an introduction to surfing in Australia. We parked up and surveyed the beach, a picture of warm golden sands, surfers shooting through deep blue curls and oiled bodies scattered under a high sun. Watching the local surfers I could sense David's feeling of trepidation. Anxiously he entered the board and wetsuit shop, surfboards and surfing paraphernalia hanging everywhere. We each handed over $30 at the counter, enough for 2 hours of surfing, and claimed our wetsuits. David stepped out of the cubicle cautiously, something was amiss. His wetsuit was baggy at the front and flopped down. The zip ran up the front, stopping three-quarters up his chest, the knee pads were on the back of his legs and the suit logo stretched uncomfortably across his back. Experienced surfers continued to pass in and out. Realising that his wetsuit was on backwards he backed up against the wall sheepishly. Fearing total humiliation David desperately tried to hide the zip with a sandal. I couldn’t stop laughing as he sidestepped along the wall and backed clumsily into the cubicle. I have never before seen anyone put on a wetsuit backwards - it was awesome. The surf itself wasn't anything special, it was high-tide and we had to work hard to reach the waves. After an hour of pretty poor surfing we decided to leave for the beach. As we stepped out of the water the ocean had one last surprise for us. From out of nowhere a huge stack of water dumped onto us, the wave rolled us into the sand like a gigantic pastry roller. We washed up on the beach dazed and spluttering.

On Saturday we checked into the 'Wake Up!' hostel before meeting up with a few of our friends for a goodbye yum cha lunch in China Town. After an hour of gorging ourselves stupid on great Chinese cuisine the three of us met up with Dave Kempers (a.k.a. Aussie Dave) outside the hostel before heading out to Alexandria to pick up the car. We decided to sign the car over to Dave in the hope that he might get some use out of it. We also hoped that he might sell it for us while we're travelling up the coast to Cairns. Aussie Dave started the ignition but nothing happened. Our first thought – the car's dead. But then I remembered that I'd been too lazy to refuel on the way back from Bondi. The four of us walked to the nearest petrol station to pick up a canister of fuel. Once back at the car we had a few difficulties funnelling the petrol into the tank. As Lee poured Aussie Dave used a big stick to keep the fuel cap open. Half way through the delicate operation Dave snapped the stick in half. He stood there with half the stick in his hand and the other half somewhere inside the fuel tank. Thankfully the car started. We drove it back to Central. The car felt good. The mechanic had repaired a few coolant leaks and the thermostat had levelled out half way. Sure, there was now a stick floating somewhere in the tank but other than that it was doing well. The last words the mechanic said were "a dealer should know better", but driving along in the sun I felt better about it - a new hope? Perhaps Aussie Dave could sell it on for us. Dave dropped us off at the hostel. We optimistically waved him off as he departed for his Gran's house on the other side of town. Thirty minutes later Dave called. Half the engine parts had exploded as he pulled into his driveway, R.I.P car that died before it even had a proper name.

Outback mechanics at work

On Saturday night we attended our friend Richie's 27^th birthday party at a bar in Newtown. It was a good opportunity to say goodbye to everyone. Even though we're going to see them all again we know that our longest stretch of time in Sydney is over. We'll have to work in Sydney for at least a month at some point to recoup what we lost on the car and save for the flight to Alice Springs, New Zealand, and China.

Sunday, 1pm. We checked out of the hostel and caught the Greyhound at Central Station. Leaving Sydney behind marked the end of the largest chapter of our trip. The Greyhound trip will cover 2,730km of the east coast of Australia and will take us through New South Wales, Brisbane (the state capital of Queensland), the Gold Coast, Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef.

London Gentleman?

Greyhound Stop 1: Newcastle 159km north of Sydney

Sunday, 3:30pm - We arrived in Newcastle, home to one of Australia's greatest music scenes and the birthplace of the band Silverchair. We checked into a YHA near Newcastle beach and after stowing our things in the room headed to the beach for some surfing. Unlike the beaches at Sydney the smooth sand is broken up by piercing slabs of craggy rocks that make surfing fairly dangerous. After an hour of wiping out on big waves and dodging skull-splitting rocks we decided to take it easy and get an early night.

Monday, 9am – Excitedly we waited outside the hostel for the bus to take us on a wine and cheese/chutney tasting tour of the Hunter Valley. If you've ever seen the film 'Sideways' you'll have a good idea of the day we had. We visited six cellar doors in total. The bus took an hour to get to the Hunter Valley where pretty vineyards cut uniform strips into an undulating landscape. Thanks to an abnormally wet winter the hills were luscious and green. The trip out was not only serene but afforded us our first glance at a kangaroo. Unfortunately it was a dead kangaroo heaped on the roadside. Lee started talking about the kangaroo corpse in detail. This was a mistake. The four Dutch girls on the bus started asking him what he meant by the word 'corpse'. Then for some unknown reason he started rambling on about how we'd end up as corpses because we did dangerous activities… that we were dangerous men and that we lived dangerously… until we become corpses ourselves. Silence fell over their quizzical faces.

When I say that the wine tasting was like the film 'Sideways', I mean it was laughably similar. Every place we went to involved talking the talk in a bid to keep the wine coming. Red, White, Rose, Dessert, Fortified all flowed in equal measures. We must have sampled sixty or seventy grape-based drinks by the end of the day. It was 26 degrees outside and barely a cloud in sight. In one winery Lee's strategic flirting with a woman named Mandy helped us to taste half the stock, though arguably it was Lee who was played as he exchanged $25 for a bottle of Nebillio. It took some serious skills from all of us to talk wine when we know next to nothing on the subject, particularly when they drop colourful adjectives the way only a wine person can. By the end of the day the free wine and burning sun had taken it's toll on our game. Lee started describing a wine only to suddenly be at a loss for words. His hands groped at the air as his mind searched for something… anything to say. His dry mouth released the words "… yes, it's very… berry". I rambled on about how I'd drink one wine as a dessert wine, even though it's not a dessert wine and the woman who probably has 30 years or more experience stared back at me incredulous. Fortunately a English girl at the table next to me caught her attention by making the unfathomable social faux pas of helping herself to a glass of wine. Red faced and slightly inebriated we made our way back to the hostel after a successful tour of the Hunter Valley.

Tuesday morning.

Went surfing at 8.30am this morning. Despite the 10 foot waves lapping at the beach we stupidly wandered into the water. Lee was flipped over and his surfboard smashed into his lip. We left the water after 5-minutes and spent the rest of the day in the YHA. Lee's lip is still swollen.