Newcastle & Hunter Valley

Date: 18/11/2010 to 19/11/2010

So after a big night out in Terrigal with the schoolies, I woke up at 7am (surprisingly without hangover) and packed my things.  I checked out of the hostel around 9am and hit the (albeit short) road to Newcastle.  I didn’t really need to plot out the drive for the day, since it was a pretty straightforward +/- 50mi drive up the coast.

The hostel in Newcastle was definitely more than a “roof over your head” type of place.  Probably an old mansion of some sort, it had big rooms, high ceilings, and a massive lounge with leather sofas everywhere.  I met a guy from Hartlepool named Nathan, and we ended up hanging out most of the time.  Played pool (I won), and ping pong (absolutely obliterated the guy, I felt bad) before heading out for a “free BBQ” organized by the hostel.  I put “free BBQ” in quotation marks since it was about the cheapest BBQ I’ve ever had.  Not that beggars can be choosers, but it consisted of two $0.10 sausages and a slop spoon’s worth of couscous and pasta salad, on top of a two-for-one drink voucher. 

After the dinner was pub quiz.  Nathan and I, and some German girls (Caroline and Christina from Heilbronn) were on a team named “Peter and four other brainless people”.  You can imagine who answered most of the questions.  And you probably won’t be surprised by the fact that we still lost.  I am amazing in trivia so long as as it has to do with geography.  The second you move away from the obscure map-related questions, I’m useless (for those interested, Uzbekistan and Liechtenstein are the world’s only doubly-landlocked nations, and the world’s greatest single adjacent time-zone difference is held by the Afghan-Chinese border – it’s 3.5hrs).  My experience, both from Sydney and now from Newcastle, is that pub quiz in Australia is about 70% “trivia” questions, and 30% Australian sports / celeb gossip inanity (“Who was the Australian bronze medalist in tiddlywinks in the 1928 Commonwealth Games?” or “Australian swimming legend Ian Thorpe recently broke up with his fourteenth girlfriend.  Name the previous thirteen in order from shortest to tallest”).  For once, I’d like a pub quiz to be 100% geography related questions…that’ll be the day.

After the pub quiz, we had some live music (local singer-songwriter who had a pretty unique guitar style, sorta similar to Newton Faulkner…a lot of percussion while playing).  Newcastle, by the way, is as close to the Austin of Australia as you get.  It’s a huge university town, the live music capital of Australia, and is a pretty funky place.  It was recently listed as one of the top five most livable places in the world. 

Unfortunately, the weather while I was there was garbage.  The first day was just cloudy, which I could deal with.  But the next day was WINDY!  Constant wind >35kph destroyed my plans of lying on the beach all day.  Instead, I was dumb enough to walk around town and take pictures.  In wind you wouldn’t even want to sail in.  I took a few pictures, but the light was too flat to get anything good unfortunately.  The rest of the day was spent surfing the web, working on blog stuff, and dominating ping pong.  I wish I could get paid playing ping pong and answering obscure geography trivia questions…that’d be awesome.

On Saturday, I got up around 7am and packed my things once more, waking up every single person in my hostel room in the process.  At least I wasn’t the first person, since some poor sap left around 4am for work.  I drove towards Cessnock, the economic center of the Hunter Valley.  About a two hour drive from Sydney, it is the most visited wine region in Australia, but it churns out some exceptionally average wine compared to what else is available in the country (Barossa, McLaren Vale, Margaret River, and pretty much anywhere in Victoria are all far superior regions).  I ducked into the local McDonalds for free internet so I could check out my route and get attacked by flies again.  I swear I don’t smell that bad, but the local flies beg to differ.

After a coffee and sausage & egg muffin, I hopped on the bike and headed northwest towards Pokolbin and the rest of the Hunter Valley.  Along the way I came across some seriously beautiful vineyards and wineries.  I saw Wyndham Estate (apparently the home of Australian Shiraz), Tyrrell wineries (also a pretty big Australian name), and some other, smaller places.  Then there was Tempus Two.  Admittedly, it is advertised as the best cellar door in the Hunter Valley, but this place looks like a new shopping mall.  The parking lot alone is as big as a lot of the local vineyards in the valley.  The building itself has multiple restaurants, cheese tasting places, and multiple cellar door / wine tasting rooms.  I drive into the parking lot and turned right around.  There are plenty of food items I have no problem with being overly commercialized.  Beer, chips, etc are all fine with me.  I have a problem with wine though.  When I think of wine and cheese, I associate them with some sort of artisanal culture.  Something where the proprietor hand-crafts his products and tries each and every one.  The owner is as much an artist as a producer, and is proud (though humbly so) of the products of his hard work.  Tempus Two was as much a factory and marketing magnet than anything else.  Maybe the wine is nice, I don’t know, but the image that the cellar door portrays is one of a conveyer-belt kind of cold efficiency and marketing machine than one of humble craftsman proud of his locally-grown vintage.  If I’m ever lucky enough to own a vineyard, I might make tons of money doing the Tempus Two thing, but I’d go so against the entire romantic image associated with viticulture that I’d basically be selling my soul for an extra buck.

But that’s all really beside the point.  You go to wine country to drink the wine, and I couldn’t do that on my motorcycle.  I might as well have been visiting lettuce or cabbage country.  The landscape was nice, and the vines sure were green.  But I couldn’t really enjoy what everyone else was – and they seemed to be enjoying it come 3pm.  So I moved on and found the most amazing ride I’ve don’t anywhere, including Switzerland.  The Broke/Wollomombi Rd (for those in Australia or planning on going), which encircles Pokolbin State Park, was fast (100kph speed limit), winding, and hilly/mountainous.  No stop lights or signs.  No traffic to speak of.  And to either side of you, vineyards or horse farms with mountainous backgrounds.  I could have easily been in Tennessee, Kentucky, or Virginia, just with more vineyards.

The day was getting long, and I needed to find a campsite.  Long story short, I didn’t find one.  I found a subdivided property full of vacant (but “sold”) lots that could have easily been out of a Friday the 13^th movie, and two unfenced but obviously privately-owned, properties with vines growing on them.  None of the three felt right, so I made the LONG ride to a spot northeast of Newcastle along the coast called the “Great Lakes” region (also the Myall Lakes National Park).  I have a feeling that failed camping attempts will continue to be a topic of this blog…