Hunter Valley.. wine, vin, vino, vinho, wino.. ?????

Audrey Wilkinson Panorama

Audrey Wilkinson Panorama

Last week/weekend I took the better half on a trip to the Hunter Valley staying at a lovely placed called Talga Estate. We decided on a quick get away, that wasnt too far a drive from Sydney and having never visted the hunter for wine itself.. it was a great choice. One of the best things about the area is that everything is in fairly close proximity.. so whilst there is a little travel between you still feel like you are in a rural area. We had penciled in a few places to visit from limited information before we left.. this was namely the Mt Pleasent & Tyrrells Wineries. They offer cheap tours ($5 each) which covers the process of wine making and then the tasting (which I think everyone looks forward too).

Tyrrells Wine Barrel

Tyrrells Wine Barrel

A tip: If you visit, try and land a Thursday in the mix! We were the only people on the Mt Pleasent tour (11am), and only a few more people were in our Tyrrells tour! (1:30pm). The times suit these two, as you have time to relax inbetween attending the next one (and try before you buy). There are numerous wine tours of the region, which would be great to do.. but would be a big day where everything just blends into each other…. visiting only a handful in a day was a great way to remember what you liked and what you learnt.

Now you cant go past the fact that the valley also has a couple of beer breweries 🙂 So inbetween wine tasting we headed up towards the Bluetongue Brewery.. we also had a tip that Mistletoe Lane (opposite the brewery) could be a good spot for photos.. it was nice but it didnt quite capture what I wanted… alas driving back to our estate we headed down a new road (deasey’s road) and i found a great fence line, with the sun setting to take the shot below.

A Sunburnt Country

A Sunburnt Country

Being very pleased with what I had found, I decided to try for some Star trails that evening.. away from lights.. check… new moon .. no check :(.. no clouds.. no check :(.. but a cool dreamscape effect was achieved due to this. The cloud cover was low, and moving quite quickly and this lit up the land on a long exposure. Unfortunately.. i slightly stooged it up by forgetting my IR remote at home.. this meant no long exposures in bulb mode and I only had 30 sec exposures to play with. This was quite a bit of fun, as most of my star trail attempts thus far had remained on ISO200 (min on D90). This time i played with ISO1600 and ISO3200.. great stuff. I think I will make an effort to finding some more star trail locations close to Sydney in the future, I just love them.

Night Vines Dreamscape

Night Vines Dreamscape

We were set to stay with friends on the Central Coast on Friday and Saturday night.. so headed off from the valley about midday on Friday. With time up our sleeves we decided to head north of Newcastle, to Stockton beach. Stockton beach has some amazing natural sand dunes which havent completely eroded away (unlike Kurnell in Sydney :(). Unfortunately there isnt much access to these dunes unless you have a 4wd! None the less it was nice checking out some spots in Newcastle, I think with a bit of local knowledge there are some great photo opportunities in the region. After our visit and relax, we headed down to Gorokan where we were staying (but our friend wasnt going to be home till 7pm). On our way through Belmont we noticed a fantastic colourful sunset in the distance, and unlike Sydney.. the area has lakes and things that make sunsets pretty (i.e – foreground interest not just colours). The shot below is a longer exposure to smooth the water, and capture the reflections on Lake Maquarie.. i also just liked the look of Pete.

Pete

Pete

After a night of a few beers and an interesting sleep on a futon, our friends decided to show us a nice beach on the coast, before heading to The Entrance for fush and chups. This saw us head north from Gorokan to a lovely spot called Catherine Hill Bay… this bay has a lovely beach and nice looking surf. The jetty has been decommissioned and closed off, but it must have loaded goods from the nearby mine in recent times. Below is a shot from the beach, in the set there is also a panorama of the area.

Catherine Hill Bay

Catherine Hill Bay

And then that is it for this little exploration. I had a great time (and seemingly so did the better half). I have tagged the location of most of the images in Flickr if you care to check.. if you would like some further information about where we stayed, what we did and where we ate im sure I can remember most of it. Ended up with a few decent bottles of wine too! I leave you with a shot of the better half, standing in a fantastic light on the Wednesday at Tatler’s Winery in Lovedale (same winery where Stormy Stormtrooper got a drink on last week).

Better Half

Better Half

As usual the full set can be seen here.

Till next time..

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