Vineyard confirmed!

Carlyn just told me that a host who owns a vineyard outside of Melbourne has CONFIRMED dates with us! So now we are officially working on a vineyard for three weeks. Actually calling where this place is "outside of Melbourne" is a bit of a misnomer because its about two hours away, but we will be traveling there from Melbourne so that seems appropriate.

The vineyard, Blue Gables, is in the Yarra Valley, which is a great area for wines (so say my guidebooks). Blue Gables makes Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Gris (aka Pinot Grigiot, my favorite!), Shiraz, and Chardonnay. The closest town to us is Maffra. Seems quaint! They have a Beet Museum. I mean, come on. That's just undeniably cool.

progress so far

With under three months until we land in Sydney, Carlyn and I are working to talk to hosts and organize our trip. We have tentative plans for almost the entirety of Australia so far! We're hoping that by the end of July we have most of our plans solidified, so its about time we started moving on to New Zealand. I'm super excited at the thought of Queenstown and all the adventures we'll get up to. (Still looking for recommendations on NZ, by the way!)

As of right now, it's looking like we'll be in Tasmania during October, Melbourne (in town and working on a vineyard nearby) for part of November, and Sydney for about a month around December. (Yes this means NEW YEARS in Sydney... so excited). We still have about two weeks though unaccounted for at the end of Nov and beginning of Dec when we hope to get up to the Byron Bay area.

Also very exciting: Carlyn's friend from Stanford, Dane, has bought a ticket to come visit us while we are in Sydney. Hopefully we will take a weekend trip up to the Great Barrier Reef while he's with us and get in some scuba-diving and snorkeling. Can't miss out on the world's largest coral reef system.

I'll start updating this more as we have more plans to report on and as our departure date (Sept 30) approaches!