A trip to New England

We ventured off reasonably early on Saturday, thinking that flying was the perfect way to travel. There isn't much to do except bide your time with delays but by 7pm we had arrived at our Hotel in Newcastle.

We took a walk through Honeysuckle which is opposite it's main industry, the port.

It surprised me on my last visit how quiet it was.....perhaps it is the real world like ours, everyone is working and getting on with it.

On Sunday, we jumped in our hire car and made it to the Hunter Valley in time for wine tasting. With one of us driving we only visited 3 wineries which leaves many more for us to visit next time. As we made our way up the New England Highway our little technology guru in the backseat was instructing me on how to use the screen. "You can do more than change the radio station you know!".......by golly there was a map with altitude readings and the temperature. We were like kids in a candy shop monitoring our ascent up the range.

We reached Guyra by about 4pm at 11 degrees, not too bad we thought. Evidently it has snowed there on Saturday, a fine explanation for the crispy grass on the roadsides and in the paddocks. The cattle and sheep do well on the pasture. It is just so different to the pastures we are used to looking at.

Our destination was east of Glen Innes for the Dulverton Angus Bull Sale. This was our second visit and again we were treated to fine hospitality.

On our first morning there, at -5, we got up and quickly adorned ourselves with thermals and beanies and raced out to take photos of the frost and frozen puddles.

We were all fascinated at how well the cattle handle the freezing temperatures. The days are beautiful down there and we managed to buy two bulls which we plan to use across our maiden Brahman heifers for about 60 days.

<Unfortunately I have no photos of the bulls (another lesson for the beginner blogger)>

Monday night is a wonderful night where vendors, purchasers and their myriad of dedicated helpers get together for a celebration. In all my time in the industry I have never experienced anything like it. We met some more wonderful people and met up with others that we had met two years prior. We dined on Kimberley Red steaks and fresh vegetables. Again it was inspiring to see what Greg and Sally do and how they do it. They welcomed us like old friends and they are like that with everyone.

On Tuesday morning with a temperature of -6, we said our goodbyes to our lovely hosts and made our way towards Brisbane through the Cunningham Gap. This is a beautiful drive and we soaked up the sun in the warmth of the car.

I have decided we are novices in the big city when it comes to fuelling up on a freeway. The only fuel station we saw was west of Ipswich. It is outrageously expensive to leave it for the hire company to fuel up, so with a couple of deviations off the freeway and no success, we found the fuel station near the International Airport. A couple of "cheeky" turns and we were fuelling up. I can't believe they haven't built a service station for incoming traffic to the airport!

We were on the 2nd last leg of our journey.

It was a great 4 day break and the boys really enjoyed having a couple of extra days off school. I enjoyed our time at Glen Innes particularly but we were glad to get home! Even if it is to all of this....

2 days worth of mail....

unpacking, washing and IRONING!