Welcome to the Clare Valley

The next morning we set off at 10am to go to the Clare Valley. I had arranged for us to stay with a family who ran a B&B. Trying to find cheap accommodation in Clare proved to be more difficult than I had thought. The caravan park was fully booked on most weekends, the local pubs wanted $75 a night which was pretty much what we would be earning in a day and so when I phoned Brian and Yvonne the owners of Bryvon Homestay they kindly offered us accommodation of $100 for the both of us per week a lot cheaper than then $100 a night they were asking for on their internet site. She let us have it cheap because we would be there for about 5 weeks and explained that we would be grape picking and therefore not earning much money. We arrived at Penwortham (just outside of Clare) at 4.30pm and met Brian and Yvonne. They were a lovely couple who were retired. They had their daughter and her children living with them but in a separate part of the house – the double garage had been converted to accommodate them.



The property was large and was actually designed by them with the help of an architect. It sat high above on a hill surrounded by 10 acres of land which consisted mostly of trees and bushes and as we found out later a family of kangaroos. Yvonne was telling us that the last time they had rain was back in December which meant water was quite precious and therefore our shower times were restricted to 5 minutes each. The other house rule as such was to try and limit rubbish. The whole family shared the rubbish bin and so it tended to fill quickly and there was no other place to take rubbish so trying to condense any packaging etc was a must. It was interesting to live by these rules as we had never had to have restrictions on anything before.

Clare Road Trip Day 2

We left Wagga Wagga at about 9.30am and continued the next leg of our journey to Mildura. Deano and Leo whom we had met at Christmas time were grape picking in Mildura and Kesha another friend of the Girl’s worked in a pizza restaurant so we had decided beforehand to stay the night there and pay them all a visit. On the long drive there we stopped at a little town called Hay where we enjoyed lunch in an old style cafe, it had car reg plates and old style posters up everywhere. The lady there was very friendly and even advised us to move our car as we had parked into a bay facing the kerb but apparently the law says you have to have your car facing the road.



After the quick stop we carried on with our trip. Again there was nothing much to see on the way, just lots of fields and on occasion another car or two. We arrived at Mildura at 4.30pm and had booked into the caravan park that Deano and Leo were staying at. Our cabin turned out to very different to the one we had stayed in the night before. As the past couple of days had been very hot (40c) air conditioning was a must, but this run down, old unit was very cramped, the air conditioning was useless and whatever little cold air did come out seemed to escape through the massive gap in the front door which didn’t close properly. But we were only staying the night and the bed looked ok so we made do. We emptied the car and went to find Deano and Leo who were playing table tennis . We chatted with them for a while and asked how they were getting on with the grape picking.



They told us of how picking in the heat was hard work, early starts and only getting $1.20 per bucket and sometimes only picking 10 buckets an hour. They also mentioned how they had seen a red back spider whilst lounging next to the pool one day which was a normal occurrence. Country life was definitely starting to sound less appealing. After catching up on what we had all been up to they showed us the caravan they were living in. Their caravan looked old and tired and really should have been knocked down. They were paying $50 a week between 4 of them to live in a hell hole which had no air conditioning. Now im prepared to put up with some things but having to sleep in 30c heat at night with no air conditioning is just unbearable! A little later we decided to visit the city centre and try and see if we could connect to the internet at the local Macdonalds as our 3USB stick no longer had a signal we were definitely in the middle of nowhere now. We popped into Macdonalds but the wireless didn’t work so as it was dinner time now went to find the Pizza cafe that Kesha worked at. 

The Pizza Cafe was very busy which was a good sign and we saw Kesha who sat us down at our table. We had a quick catch up but as she was working couldn’t talk for long. We enjoyed our meal and after saying bye to Kesha and then later to the boys went to bed.

Last day in Sydney and Road Trip Day 1

A couple of weeks earlier Adam and I had made the decision to try and do some harvest work so we could apply for a 2nd year working holiday visa. So as I had not been able to get a job I had been busy looking for fruit picking work. I had tried calling the National Harvest Line to be told that there was nothing available so I started to search on the internet. Eventually I found a company who were looking for grape pickers in the Clare Valley (2 hours north of Adelaide), it was a bit further than we had intended on going, ideally we would have liked to have worked in the Hunter Valley which is only 2 hours north of Sydney but it was not meant to be. So the change of plans would mean that as we would have to do 88 days worth of harvest work we would have to cut out some of our travel destinations to fit in the 88 days. We made the decision to leave Sydney on the 2nd Feb and do a road trip to get to the Clare Valley.
The girls helped organise a leaving party for us so on the Saturday Adam, Frank and I left our apartment and made our way to Bondi Hotel (where Lisa now worked) and the rest of the gang would be. And as you guessed it the drinking began. We stayed there for a couple of hours as Lisa was working behind the bar and then eventually made our way to the Tea Gardens club at Bondi Junction. We partied until 2am and said farewell to some people that we would not see again and organised to have dinner at the girls’ on Sunday.



The following day Adam and I collected our rental car from Hertz which was a nippy little Toyota Corolla and made a quick stop at Emma’s to say goodbye. Emma and Matt had mentioned previously that they didn’t have any drinking glasses so as a farewell present we had stopped at Ikea and bought them 6 glasses which Emma seemed to be very happy about. After returning to the apartment to do some last minute packing we then drove to Bondi to have dinner at the Girls’. After dinner we presented Lisa, Roisin and Sally with a picture frame each which contained various photos we had of them and us and a jar of Hellman’s mayonnaise for all the other girls to share too (the Aussie mayo was horrible and Hellman’s could only be bought at select Coles Superstores). We got big hugs off everyone and said a sad farewell to our “Girls”.
On Monday we also said bye to Frank and thanked him for everything with a picture we had taken of all of us in front of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and then started our road trip. We had decided to go to our first destination (Wagga Wagga) via Canberra.



We stopped off at the Canberra Information Office and got some advice on what we could do within the 2 hours we would be there. One suggestion was to visit Parliament House. I called the information number and promptly booked us on a free tour.

The tour took about an hour and it was fascinating listening to the stories and going into the various chambers. After the tour we then drove up to the Australian War Memorial which houses a museum covering many conflicts which Australia was involved in. Looking at the history and hardship some people went through was very thought provoking. After spending about an hour there as well we then made our way into the City Centre to have a look around and a grab a bite to eat. We found a little cafe and enjoyed our lunches whilst people watching, it had been a lovely stop but we had many hours of driving ahead of us so we eventually left (a little later than we had intended). We drove for about 5 hours only stopping to fill the car up.

The journey was long and the scenery started to become tiresome and predictable but the time in the car gave us the opportunity to try and catch up on our blog. We finally arrived at the caravan park where we would be staying in at about 9.30pm in Wagga Wagga. The cabin was a little dated but very spacious. It had a kitchen and lounge area and a bedroom with ensuite. We caught the end of “The Devil Wears Prada” and went to sleep.