We had a day of wine tasting in the Hunters Valley yesterday, which was pretty good fun, I didnt realise you could just turn up at the wineries, and they would server you their wine to taste. We went to four, the first, Sobels, being the best by far (in my opinion. We bought some Merlot), closely followed by Ivanhoe's. Apparenly Shiraz is what the valley is famous for though. At 40AUD (20GBP) each it wasnt too bad, but on top of that was lunch and the train (36AUD Return) to Missota. We made the mistake of not actually booking tour, and just getting a train ticket (to Newcastle), luckily the guy at the train station gave us details of a tour company, as otherwise we would have turned up to Newcastle, with little chance of getting a tourbus.

Last night we it up to Brisbane and stayed last night at the Bunks backpackers hostel, which although the price (approx 96AUD) was the same as the hotel we stayed at in Sydney, the room was a little basic which we kind of expected, however the facilities in the hostel look great!

Tonight we will probably just stay in a dorm room (36AUD each). We are planning to get a campervan tomorrow and head up the Sunshine Coast, but the weather forecast doesn't look good, with rain forecast until next Wednesday (when we fly back to Sydney!).

So we may be washed out, but at least if we get a camper our accomodation will be a little cheaper! We could head inland a bit maybe, but we'll just have to see!

The flight from Sydney to Brisbane was really nice - compared to crappy ryanair, the Virgin Blue flight had all the trappings of a long distance flight, helpful friendly staff, and most importantly - cheap! About the same cost of a ryanair flight from Dublin to Gatwick approx 40GBP.

We're planning to meet Neil and Vicky tonight, which i'm really looking forward to, and with any luck we'll spend some time with them over the weekend too (Camping - dependant on weather!).