Ordering some home delivery (liquid)

Bird of the Day:  Blue-faced Honeyeater.  Not common anywhere I plan to be for the next 2 months at least.

Plant of the Day:  Grape vine!  Olive tree also a contender!

Scene of the Day: Clifftops above the Hunter Valley

Art of the day;  Statue of Tamberlaine.  A  close runner up was the laneway art in Cessnock but I don't feel as attached to that as the nice folk at the winery.  Other nominees were the mosaic poles at Nulkaba PS and the circles at Cockfighters Ghost

Typically Australian thing of the day:  Mothers driving kiddies to school (mainly using a full size 4x4).  Both of us came up with this one independently.

Maximum Temperature  22 Minimum temperature  10

Distance traveled  with camper  0 without camper 60

The night was not that flash as we were awoken by a pooch barking at about 11:15.  This startled Tammy who also quoth a few epithets.  By the time we had calmed her down we were well awake and also well aware of the TV being played loudly by a nearby camper.  As this camp had a quiet time starting at mid-night (rather than the usual 10pm) I waited until 12:01  before going and asking that they turned the <expletive deleted> thing down.  Which they did, with an apology.

The more upright, and cuter, of these dogs was the late-night barker.  The other, yclept Noddy, was quieter although did offer a dispute with Tammy when they first met.

Generally all the dogs in campgrounds got on well together.  I suspect this is because they are all out of territory and thus not defensive.  Also, by and large they are smaller dogs and the owners realise that harmony is good!  While Tammy was a bit discombobulated about the disruption to her life she did seem to enjoy meeting lots of other pooches for sniffs and bouncing.  And I'm sure she was happier being with us than in kennels.

Our morning walk went past the school with nifty mosaic poles ..

... and a mural ...

and a bit of trepidation by me about taking photos in somewhere that kiddies have been seen recently.   (Rolf who??  Never heard of him officer.)

Overall the walk was quite pleasant, although we were astonished by the number of people using what I thought was a dirt road to nowhere.  It must be a short cut from one side of Pokolbin to the other.

Our first business was to explore the town of Cessnock, some 3 km further down the road.  This impressive place was a Bank, but is now converted to law offices.

Another nice old pub

We started to follow signs to a War Memorial but it seemed to be a fair step so I asked in a shop.  The owner knew a lot or very little (depending whether your question was about lawn mowers, which he sold, or War Memorials).  He suggested a place which sounded like the back of the RSL down in the town but no cigar on that one!

So we headed back to the car for searching in comfort.  In a small alley we came across this display of 'Laneway Art" which was quite clever.

I particularly liked this one which I would title "Homer Simpson meets Edvard Munsch".

We fired up El Camion and headed out along the road indicated by the sign to the War memorial.  Indeed, we went out ... and out .. and out.  I was however cheered by other signs to the cemetery (I often am, as although possibly morbid, cemeteries are often good for orchids as well as War Memorials).  After about 4km - as I said, quite a step - there were the memorial gates!

OK so that was Cessnock ticked off.  Now to the serious business of the day: wineries.  There are many of these in the Hunter and we had a map showing lots of them.  A route was planned, also taking in a few other interesting nosh purveyors.

Our first stop was at the Drayton Family winery.

I was  initially struck by sticker shock, but found some reasonably priced stuff which didn't taste bad.  So went out to give Frances a shot.  She was not impressed so on we went.

The next place was Poole's Rock Wines, purveyors of the Cockfighters Ghost range.  Cockfighter was a horse as explained in the linked post.  They had a couple of good Shiras so Frances was pointed in to pass an opinion, but with guidance about 2 bottles of each.   The place was well done up with a nice zen(ish) rock and pebble arrangement out front.  It didn't look too pet friendly however.

Frances emerged with a half dozen carton in arm and announced that she preferred McLaren Vale sample so had acquired 4 of them instead of the 2 'suggested'.   Far be it from me to disagree with such initiative.

The next spot was Tamburlaine, who got off very much on the right foot with this sticker, which pretty much says all needed on the mining topic.

Their foyer was decorated with this nifty depiction of Timur the Lame himself which gets itself a gong as art of the day.

As the place seemed to be pointing itselt in lots of correct directions I enquired how they felt about Fox Terriers.  The comment was made that there was usually one wandering about the place.  (I realised later that this was probably the very small dog from the next caravan to us.)  Whatever, they were cool so both of us went in for a gurgle.

The wine was very nice but the price ($40 a bottle) not at all nice.  They did have some other wine on a nearby shelf for $15 a bottle, which is more our speed so I asked why there was a difference.  The answer was that they were old wines, but under cork so the quality could not guaranteed.  As I explained to the guy there was an obvious gamble: buy one bottle of Stelvin recent  and the quality is guaranteed or for more or less the same money get three old ones with probably a 10% chance that they will be corked.  It seemed to me that this meant there was about a 70% chance that all three would be OK. (Even if you put the probability of a bottle being stuffed up to 20%  the chances of all three being crap was only 50% - given by 0.8 ³, which is a lot better than 30%).  So we got a 2002 Chambourcin, 2001 Hunter Syrah (or Shiraz), and a 2001 Hunter Cabernet Merlot.  (Cutting to the future they were all good: the Chambourcin very good, the Cab Merlot just good and the Syrah one of the best wines I can remember drinking.  I am arguing strongly that we become members of their club and thus have access to their wines at $22 a bottle.)

One the way out we noticed another image the of the gimpy one.

Continuing on towards the Broke Road I was greatly taken by the escarpments on the Western side of the Valley ....

.. and the vines all over the place.

A couple of cheesemongers were visited but we decided that $80 a kilo was a little excessive for cheese no better than product we usually acquire for about $20 a kilo.  So a pause was in order to tick off a couple of towns.  The first of these was Branxton where a War Memorial was proving a little hard to find.  However a kazi (in the Cockney slang sense rather than the kiswahili - recognising that at times they can both apply simultaneously) was becoming a higher priority objective.

Of course soetimes Murphy's Law works in reverse and there was memorial adjacent to the required facility

Having bagged one town we headed off for another: the very close Greta.  (In fact en-route we passed the Brnxton-Greta memorial pool which obviously raised a few metadata issues.)  However a need to scrutinise the rule book was avoided as we found a very good cenotaph  in the middle of the main street of Greta.

This engraving on the head of the cenotaph seemed worth photographing as an example of respectful patriotism -  I'm not sure how legible they are but the words read "They answered their country's call".

Apart from the Council Chambers looking quite trim I was intrigued about which Mayor had the hubris to stick his name so prominently on the building.  On checking the foundation stone it turns out Mr Pryor was the Mayor when the building was erected.

The other main building in Greta was a bakery which delivered a pretty good pie.  Then it was back to Wine Country Drive (the main drag to Cessnock) for some more tasting.  Before getting the lips to work we checked this memorial to the Rothbury Riot.  The use of the word scab - IMHO quite fair in the circumstances -suggests this wasn't put up the Cessnock branch of the National Party.

We called in at another winery offering stuff at $40 a slug and left without trying.  Then to De Bortoli's Hunter operation from whom we buy quite a bit on line.

 I enquired what they thought about dogs and was asked what problem could there be, pointing to a book about Winery Dogs!  So in came Tammy and Frances.  I asked if they needed any rats dealt with but the winery and warehouse were not so blessed.  We had a really good time with the host knowing his stuff and being very helpful.  If we ordered >$100 delivery home would be free also.  We managed a fair bit better than the qualification and at about $11 a bottle average - now that is more like the right price for good wine.

Our final planned stop was at the Potters Brewery.

Warning signs about the likely prices appeared with use of the word "resort" around the gate.  OK so it will be a bit pricey.  Bugger me: $15 a bottle - even for 750ml bottles that is frankly ridiculous, especially given that they were all love in a canoe (check 4th quote in the linked page).

On getting back to the camper it was time to start organising things for the camper to be serviced the next day and for us to stay with friends in Sydney.  One important step in this was to get some wine to drink with our evening meal.  I though a bottle of Cockfighters Ghost would partially fit the bill.  You remember Frances walked out "with a half dozen carton in arm".  Like her I had assumed this meant it had half a dozen bottles in it.  Not so: they had omitted the two bottles of Hunter Shiraz!  Checking the receipt, they hadn't charged for it either.

So I now found that the road past the school was indeed a short cut to West Pokolbin.  Apparently Frances had said something like "I like the McLaren Vale better. So I'll have 4 of that" with the staff  not realising that meant 4 instead of 2 McLarens plus 2 Hunter.  Whatever: they were quite happy to sell me the missing items.

A bonus on the way back was noticing that the gates leading into the Pokolbin Hall were enhanced with Honour Rolls!

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