Week 2

I think it's really interesting how short of a time it took for me to feel comfortable here. The US to Australia isn't the biggest jump, but after only two weeks here, it already feels like home and not just some place I'm visiting. 

One of my favorite parts about Mollydooker so far is that the standard work week is 38 hours long. We only have to work 6 hours on Fridays, so we get off at 2 to get the weekend started early. Last Friday, we had a barbecue at the winery before everyone headed off to go camping at the beach. Here's a shot some of us in the water:

The camp ground was in a great spot and we had a lot of fun that night. The rest of the weekend was spent relaxing and doing a bit more wine tasting. We still don't have a car, so we're pretty limited in where we can go and what we can do at this point. Ben and I wanted to go tasting at a winery called Noon that we had heard a lot about, so on Sunday we went for a walk to check it out. It was a pretty long walk, about an hour and a half each way. After finally making it out there, we found out that they were closed because they had sold out of everything they made for the past year. But since we had walked all that way, we decided to step inside and have a look anyway. While we were snooping around, we ended up bumping into the winemaker who gave us a tour and his card and told us to come back and check things out when there was some action. We still didn't get to taste any of their wines, so we'll have to head back there in about a month. It's a beautiful place though, so I won't mind making the trek again. 

Things are beginning to pick up at the winery, but the grapes still have a little bit of time before we'll be picking them, so we've been splitting time doing wine work and general cleaning at the facility. On Tuesday, I was out doing some yard work in a spot we call the Wood Lot. There are some great views up there, but we also came across a baby Eastern Brown snake while we were there. I later found out that it's one of the deadliest snakes in the world, and it being a baby, it was even worse because they can't control their venom at that stage. Gotta love Australia.

Here's a shot of the view:

And here's a shot of the baby Brownie:

Wednesday was our first payday, so we decided to celebrate by drinking some wine and checking out the lawn bowling spot in town. I'd never played before, but that game is a lot of fun. It's a lot like bocce ball, but with balls that are slightly bigger on one side than the other so they curve when you roll them. I going to need a little bit of practice though as the final score of our game was 7 to 6 to 1, with Jeff edging Chris and me bringing up the rear. Here's a shot of Jeff making the winning roll:

Things are going well here, and we might be doing some exploring this weekend. I'll keep you posted if we do.

John