Vintage Parade

In the Barossa they had a Vintage Festival that happens every 2 years. It lasts for a week and there are just different events happening all around the small cities that make up the Barossa.

On the last day, the main event is the Vintage Festival Parade. It is a parade that lasts about 7k from Nuri to Tanunda. Every float has a different theme and St Hallett decided to do a play on words and go with a Halloween theme; St Hallettween. Because the parade is 7km long (about 2 hours), and there would be drinking, someone had a genius idea of putting a porta-potty on board and decorating it as a haunted house! Perfect!

The day started out early, 830am on a Saturday, it was really not that bad since we had been working so early the weeks prior. Everyone then met at the float at 930 for some breakfast (doughnuts, pasties, pies, quiches) and drinks (never started drinking that early before... so that was an experience in itself).   

We had people dress up as all kinds of scary zombies, the Adam’s family, skeletons, etc. and I was a devil.  We had a great time drinking St Hallett wine and dancing to thriller during the parade. Because I learned the dance in college, I was in the front row at the parade. Some of my fellow coworkers also had a good time scaring some of the people in the crowd. That gave us all a good laugh.

It was fun having the Halloween theme, especially because it is coming into fall here in the Barossa so it felt like naturally Halloween should be coming up. 

Easter Weekend at the Races

Every Easter weekend there are Horse Races up in Clare, a city about 40 min north. Kaitlyns housemates sister (Sophie) invited us to go up with here and she said it is her favorite day of the year, so we had to go!

At the races all the girls were their nicest dresses and the guys all dress up in suits. Therefore, we needed to go shopping ASAP because we were not prepared with the clothes we brought from home! The weekend prep began on Thursday, late night shopping in the Barossa (shops are open until 9 instead of 5).  We found great dresses and accessories for reasonable prices and in a short amount of time. It was a very successful night and all the stores were having massive 'end of summer' sales!

On Friday, Sophie picked us up to spend the night at her parents house out in the country. The house was an old fashioned farm house. It was really nice to get to go and see that side of Australia. We had an early night and got up early Saturday to start getting ready. It felt like homecoming but not as fancy.

We ended up at Spohie's friends house up in Clare for a pre races brunch and drinks. It was full of muffins, cookies, Mimosas, fruit, ect. All the girls looked great in their dresses and hair but we couldn't wait to get to the actual races.



So apparently at the races, no one actually watches the horses race. They just drink and socialize with the everyone they haven't seen since the year before at the races. I can see how this would be 'the best weekend of the year' for people who lived here and got to catch up with all of their friends. It was still a good time for Kaitlyn and I. As the races came to an end, a DJ came on and it turned into a dance sesh that later continued down at the bars in Clare.

It ended up being one of he best day/nights we had had in Australia to date and were really happy that we had Sunday and Monday off to hang out and relax after an action packed Saturday.

Easter here is a lot different. It is always a 4 day weekend with Good Friday and Easter Monday as the main holidays. Sunday the actual day of Easter isnt really a big deal here which seemed really odd to me. I guess thats part of traveling and living somewhere new, you get to experience holidays in a new way that has parts that are better (4 day weekend) and others that you miss (celebrating Easter).

Ango and Roaring 40's pizza

There is a farmers market every Saturday ( I think I talked about this before) in a neighboring town just outside of Angaston (another larger neighboring town).  Andrea and I decided to bike there and the only way we knew how was on some busy farm roads.  The roads are pretty narrow and there isnt much of a shoulder to bike on so that was a bit nerve racking. Anyways, we made it there no troubles and had a look. Luckily
 we ran into a coworker who told us about a bike path that goes straight in to Nuri, so we found that and took it home.

This brings me to my next adventure.... There is a pizza place that everyone talks about having the best pizza in the Barossa, so naturally Kaitlyn and I had to go. It is in Angaston so I also knew the way to get there via the bike path!

It is about 6 kilometers from Nuri to Ango, which isn't a too bad for a bike ride. We thought, this will be a good little work out and reward ourselves with some pizza and then ride back, no problem! But.... 2K into the ride, my back tire went completely flat. It was a nice day out and the bike path is very scenic, in between many different vineyards, so we decided to push our bikes and continue on.

We finally made it to the pizza place after about an hr of pushing the bikes along (it was worth it) and ordered our pizza. At this point we needed to find a way home. This was the first time we had done anything where Kaitlyn didnt bring her phone (usually we never use it!) and mine was out of credit and about to die. Luckily the manager of the place let us borrow his phone to call for a ride.

We ended up calling Bec, the lab manager, who came straight away to give us a helping hand. The only problem was that she brought her car which didnt fit 2 bikes..... so she drove all the way home to get a bigger car but couldnt find the keys, so she came back to get us. The restaurant manager again was extremely nice and helpful and allowed us to store our bikes in their back shed until the next day when Bec's boyfriend could go pick them up. Everyone is so so nice here and our disaster ended up being an adventure and just another Tuesday night in the Barossa.

Update!! Work, Cuddlee Creek and Adelaide

Work seemed like all I had done for the past 6 weeks. 60 hrs a week was a lot to handle, especially starting at 5... work, eat, sleep was the routine. The big harvest part of vintage is virtually over, so we are now working 7 hr days and have the weekends off!! It seems like I have so much free time I dont know what to do with my self sometimes.

One of the full time cellar hands has a really nice camera and he sets it up and has it take a picture every second and then makes it in to a video. So here is one of the videos he made of what happens in the cellar during harvest.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rhk-4IUBsX8

Last weekend was the first weekend we had off since my birthday, so a group of us decided to get out of town and see what Adelaide night life had to offer.

Because we are in Australia, holding a koala and feeding a kangaroo seemed like a 'must do.' Some of my friends at work are locals and were able to tell us a place where we could do this, and it was on the way down to Adelaide, perfect! It was called Cuddlee Creek. What a perfect name! It was kind of hard to find, and with some detours in the beautiful Adelaide Hills, we finally found it.

The place was like a zoo, but sectioned off where kangaroos and wallabies could run around freely and people could pet them, like a petting zoo. It was really bazaar and intimidating at first. The kangaroos were so soft and friendly once I let down my guard.  Seeing so many movies and TV shows where the kangaroo kicks a person always stays with you...






There were also monkeys, dingos,  emus, bats, camels, panthers... (others that I cant remember).  Holding the koala was really special and something that I wasn't expecting to do. I've seen people take pictures with them while they are sitting on a tree right next to them, but holding it was pretty cool. It latches on to you like a child and then just sits there and eats the eucalypti leaves as you hold it and smile at the camera. Cute and cuddly thing.

Paul (English), Brooke (Australian), ME, Kaitlyn (Californian) and Kim (Danish)

That was pretty much the highlight of the weekend adventure. In Adelaide, we did a lot of walking around and some shopping. It is just like any other city with lots of people out and about.

This last Friday, Paul left us to start another harvest in New Zealand. The first of many good byes to come. They are still horrible, and this is the worst part of traveling. Everyone who knows me, knows that I am the worst at saying good bye. AHHH!!!

Adventures in the Braossa

Nuriootpa is the city I live in and Tanunda is a city that is about 8k away. Most of the time, Nuri closes down early so we head to Tanunda for exciting nights out.

A few weeks ago, we discovered the brewery there. There have an awesome cider for me and some good beer for the others. Anyways we had a good night out over there on a night that started out as, 'lets get a couple beers at the brewery and call it a night.'

At the end of the night Quentin (my roommate) and I were ready to go home. We had gotten a ride to Tanunda from Paul (he had to work the next day so he went home early) but needed to get a ride home. We thought about getting a taxi, but then remembered that it is pretty expensive for such a short ride. Quentin then had an idea, "lets hitch hike!" I told him, "no we cant my mom will kill me!" .... long story short, we ended up attempting to hitch hike in this small tourist town but no one picked us up and we ended up walking the whole way home, in flip flops. Our dogs were barkin!!!

We have come to the conclusion that we weren't picked up because we looked like hippies. It was a Friday, so I had by tie-dye Friday Modesto shirt on, and Quentin was wearing some flowy Aladdin pants with his crazy curly hair and bandanna on.



Last night, Andrea and I wanted to go out in Tanunda (Kaitlyn the other American girl lives there,and like I said before its a more lively place). Again we didn't want to have to pay for a taxi both ways so we decided to ride bikes there and cab it home! The bike laws in Australia are very strict (Robert Pattinson (Twilight) got a ticket for biking with out a helmet back in Jan, and you know they mean business when a celebrity cant get out of a ticket).

Andrea wanted to be an "Italian Stallion" and put gel in his hair, so he didn't want to wear his helmet. I explained to him we needed to but he still denied. It was dark out as well so we should have had some sort of light. But we didnt..... We rode for about 10 min when a cop finally stopped us. He asked Andrea where his helmet was and where our lights were. Andrea said sorry, the cop gave me some props for wearing my helmet and then told us to walk our bikes home. So we did. He also informed us that this stop could have been a $250 fine! In the famous words of Andrea. "Thats INCREDIBLE!"

The incident was much more dramatic and hilarious that it seems here, because of Andrea's lack of understanding/English isn't 100%.

Sky

The sky here is incredible. I just cant stop looking at it while working. At first I thought it was because of my sunglasses but its defiantly just because it is so beautiful.  The sky is ALWAYS so blue and the clouds are so fluffy looking. Maybe its because I'm living in such a small town with less pollution or maybe its just the Australian sky.

 Sure, the sun rises and sets are amazing, but during the day is beautiful as well.

This post is dedicated to Miss Katie and her love of clouds <3

Work

Harvest started to kick in full blast. After my birthday weekend (great timing) we started to work two 10 hr shifts between the crew, 6 days a week. Mine is the morning shift, 5am-3pm Monday thru Saturday, and the afternoon shift is 2:30pm-12:30am. It is long and hard hours, but will be rewarding to see our hard work in an actual product.

One of the first days of the two shifts, we had a bit of down time and one of the wine makers let us stomp grapes with our feet. It was a really cool experience, except when anyone walked past us they liked to say, "...remember what happened 3 years ago...." Three years ago, one of the wine makers did the same thing but to a ferment and he ended up in the hospital with a yeast infection on his leg!! Ours was grapes hadn't started fermenting, and had been in the cold room (good for freezing your feet, it was really cold) for a week, so I think we are in the clear! 

Birthday

I had an awesome birthday this year even though I was far from home and also, having it during the summer was so much better than the dead of winter. My birthday lasted 3 days this year!! Thursday, Feb 7th here in Australia, then Friday because it was the 7th back home (thank you everyone on Facebook for the well wishes) and then again Saturday with a big party!

Thursday, at work, one of the girls was so sweet and brought a cake to celebrate. Everyone got together at our morning tea (mid morning break) to eat the cake and sing me happy birthday. Then when I came home, there were some beautiful flowers at the door! Thank you mom, dad, Shelby, Matthew and of course Ab-E girl!!

I invited everyone from the winery to my house on Saturday for a BBQ and some drinks. The people here are so giving and love any reason to have a party and celebrate. One of the full time lab girls brought about 20 sausages to share with everyone, someone brought guacamole  others brought chips, jello shots, and of course beer and wine. Needless to say, we had a GREAT time!!

Cat Walk

Today at work I was doing some work on the up on the cat walks around the top of the tanks and realized I wasn't scared. I used to be SO scared of heights especially going up stairs and walking on things you can see through to the ground.

I think that skydiving this summer really helped over come some of that fear. Thanks Miss Bruna for making me do that!!!

Work, Elizabeth and Money

WORK

Work has been good so far. We received our first load of white grapes last week, January 30th. The process was pretty similar as what I had done at Gallo, just on a MUCH MUCH larger scale (weird to say since Gallo is so big..) First all the grapes are dumped in to a hopper (basically a huge stainless steel bin that moves up and down and can pivot to dump) to be weighed and then pushed through a destemmer which separates the grapes and all the other stuff (leaves, branches, lizards, etc.... yes we saw a bearded dragon lizard). The grapes then move through some pipes to the press (basically a huge juicer that uses air pressure to squeeze the juice out of the fruit) and then into a tank. In theory it’s a pretty simple process, but St. Hallett being a pretty big winery, there are many overhead pipes that need to be connected to each other just right in order for the juice to end up in the right place. You must check and double check everything, always!!

First lot of grapes

Out Looking at the Vinyards

There is always something to do around the winery when the fruit isn’t being processed. Juice always needs to be transferred form one take to another, or we need to add something, or the wine needs to be filtered. None the less, there is always something to do, unless the winemakers just like to see us push around the big pumps and drag hoses around… we’ll never know!

The saying is, “Working in a winery is 49% cleaning, 49% lifting/moving heavy stuff around and 2% drinking beer.”

ELIZABETH

Elizabeth is our 4^th roommate, the spider. I think we met the 3^rd day I was living here when Giles, Quentin and I were sitting in the kitchen talking when she was just there on the wall. She was very scary for a while until Quentin gave her the name Elizabeth and Giles told me she takes care of all the other bugs that would be in the house if it wasn't for her. She was in the kitchen for a few days, then disappeared (worst part not knowing where she is…) for a few days and then ended up in the hallway outside of our bedrooms. She sat there for about a week not moving and we all thought she was dying! It was actually kind of sad to see her not moving and kind of shriveling. But then she surprised us and moved in to MY BEDROOM!!!! Needless to say, I liked her much better when she wasn't in here... Finally she came down on the wall low enough that Quentin was able to catch her in a container and put her outside. I am sure we will see her back in the house in the next few days, but we’ll see.

Quentin Capturing Her

Above My Bed

Elizabeth is a Huntsman spider. I did some research and discovered the average lifespan for a Huntsman is about two years of MORE!! The good thing is, if she were to bite, a cold pack is all one needs to relieve the pain. Still not very reassuring but at least she won’t kill me.

MONEY

The money here is really fun and easy to spend because it looks like monopoly money. Every bill is a different color and size with a little see through plastic piece in the top corner. There is a $100 (green), $50 (yellow), $20 (red), $10 (blue), and $5 (purple) bill. The weirdest is there are $2 and $1 coins. I also got a hot pink debit card, pretty cool! 

My friend Kaitlyn brought up a good point, “When someone wants to go to a strip club, do they just throw coins?” The answer is no, you switch your money for ‘stripper dollars’ and at the end of the night its gets switched back to real money. Kind of a funny concept that I would have never thought of if it wasn't for her. 

COMING UP..

My birthday is in 2 days and I am so excited to having it during SUMMER!! Its probably the only time in my life that this will ever happen, so its so exciting!! We are planning to have a party over here at the house with all the other harvest interns as well as some of Giles friends. He just bought/moved in to this house and wants to have a house warming party. SO.... we are going to just have a joint party that is going to be American themed. Hot dogs and burgers on the grill, chips, pop and maybe some salads to go with it. We'll see!!! 

and as always, 

GO COUGS!

So far..

Tuesday, January 15th, I left the US to come to Australia to work a wine harvest job 

at St. Hallett Wines.

Packing really wasn't all that bad until I got to the airport and realized my large bag was 14lbs over the 50lb weight limit. I got there about an hour before the flight thinking it would be like any other flight and things would go smoothly.... but of course they didn't. I was told that it would be $100's to check the overweight bag the whole way to Australia and the other option would be to separate things out and check an extra bag for $70. That being said, I rearranged my bags in order to meet the weight requirement.


I then went to check the luggage and the nice lady whispered in my ear, 'I won't charge you this time =).' It was very nice of her, but because that took so long I needed to rush through security and board the flight to San Francisco.  I made it, and it went well.


The cheapest flight at the time that I booked the trip had a 14 hour in SF. Luckily, Sierra lives there and we were able to spend some time together before the 14 hour flight to Sydney. That all went well. I was able to have a window seat but it was in the very back of the plane. It was torture boarding the plane at the front and walking through the first and business class looking at their fully reclining seats with foot rests. There should be a back entrance for the economy class people. Once arriving in Sydney, I needed to clear customs  and take a bus to the domestic flights terminal in an hour and a half in order to catch the flight to Adelaide.  That all sounds ok, until you see that a bunch of other international flights landed at the same time which also need to clear customs. So, I missed the flight to Adelaide but was able to catch a later one in the afternoon.

Finally arrived in Adelaide on Thursday, January 17th.

I took a taxi to the neighboring beach town of Glenelg.  They have a great backpackers hostel that I had emailed a few weeks prior reserving a single room. I dropped my bags off and headed to the beach.  It was late afternoon when I arrived so I relaxed in the sand, went to a few shops and then watched the sunset. It was beautiful!!

After a good night sleep, I was ready to get some things done in order to start working. There was an Australian bank (ANZ) down the street and so I was able to set up and account and order a debit card. I was hoping to get my cellphone up and working as well, but the company that has been recommended didn't have a store in Glenelg, so to the beach I went.

 

 Shelley, a winemaker at St. Hallett, had arranged to pick me and a couple co-workers up in Adelaide that Friday and take us to Nuri. Adelaide is about an hour and some to Nuriootpa where I am currently living. Nuriootpa is about a 15 min drive to the winery, so I was nervous about living here and not having ride to work. Also, Giles (the guy who owned the house I am living in) was not home when I arrived in Nuri, he was working.  Luckily he left a key for me in the mail box and some information about the house on the table.

I met Giles the next morning when I woke up and before he had to leave to work again. It was nice to get my things put away and get settled into the house but a bit lonely in a new city with out anything to do. But then later that afternoon, my new roommate Quentin arrived. We had an instant friendship and headed straight to Tanunda to meet up with some others and walk around a car show. We bonded over the cars, drinks and some food and made plans for the next day.

Quentin (French guy), Andrea (Italian guy), Kaitlyn (California girl) and I went wine tasting and to the Whispering Wall on our last day off before starting work. We tasted at St. Hallett to familiarize ourselves, and Jacob's Creek (big big winery here in the Barossa). The Whispering Wall is a dam which a person is on either side and when you speak next to the wall, the sound travels to the other as if they were standing next to you. It was really cool!

Monday the 21st was my first day of work at the winery! The first few days was all about paper work and many tours from different people pointing out what they thought was important about the winery. It was interesting to see the different roles each person plans in making the final wine what it is. The staff also had a nice BBQ lunch with us. Steak and egg sandwiches! YUMM! At the end of the day, we got to taste through all of the wines with the winemaker talking about them with us. The main wine produced in the Barossa Valley is Shiraz (Syrah). There is really a big difference in wine depending on which part of the valley it was grown on because the environment (climate, soil, ect.) is so different. The differences are interesting and fun to try and pick out.

The paper work got old after a few days, so St Hallett took us to the beach for the day! Never thought I would get paid to go to the beach! I could defiantly get used to that. We spend the day playing beach cricket, dodgeball, tug of war, swimming, eating, and drinking.  It was one of the hottest days, so made for the perfect day to go to the beach! Once we got back to the Barossa, everyone went to one of the interns houses and we continued to bond by having a BBQ.
















Australia Day was next. It is basically the 4th of July in that everyone spends the day BBQing and a day of drinking at the beach. It was different celebrating the Australian holiday with all foreign people... Italian, French, Italian Swiss, South African, Canadian, and Jordanian! We didn't get the full "Austrailan" experience but it was still a lot of fun because of the great people. It was fun learning bits and pieces of Italian and French and crazy to think we had a table of 3 different first languages of people.

This past week and three day weekend was a great way to start out before the heart of harvest. So far I have made some great friends and just had a lot of fun. 

Also, realized that I MUST live near a beach to see a sunset every once and a while! LOVE THEM!

SATURDAY NIGHT:

SUNDAY NIGHT:

MONDAY NIGHT:

There are also some awesome perks of living with a chef.... Duck Curry & Pork with Peanut Sauce dish once night and then tonight we had this... Chicken, potatoes cooked in duck fat, baked tomatoes and the most amazing carrots you could ever imagine.

And as always, 

GO COUGS!