I could make a beaver eat a fish

Well, what a fantastic week it's been: starting with a few days in Sydney, we moved on to the Hunter Valley, which is a wine region, north of the city.

We stayed in a beautiful log cabin, just outside the middle of nowhere - no mobile signal, no wifi, no contact. Just the four of us, the barbecue and a whole lot of wildlife. Very, very noisy wildlife. When the sun went down, two things became very clear - just how dark it gets in the middle of nowhere and just how loud the frogs, crickets, birds and god-knows what else can be. Honestly, I've stayed in quieter cities!

I've also watched far too many horror films for my own good. Especially the ones that begin with a bunch of friends taking a road-trip into the deep countryside. The consequences of that little hobby finally came home to roost when I realised that my bedroom was in a separate and self-contained part of the cabin. Anything could happen and no one would know... I must confess that I wedged a chair against the door, just in case! I jumped at every noise outside (of which there were a lot) and didn't sleep well at all, despite the sleeping tablets. I like the countryside and it's pretty to look at but I'm a city boy at heart!

For a man who drinks so much of it, I know remarkably little about wine - which made the wine tour we took on Wednesday particularly interesting. My pallet isn't very sophisticated and I was a bit worried after the first couple of vineyards because I couldn't really tell the difference in the wines but I perked up immensely after being introduced to chilled fizzy red wine! Take it from me: it's the future. Mr L sensibly kept track of what we were drinking and the final tally for the day was somewhere in the region of 40 glasses each. Needless to say, that day was all a bit of a blur.

After a trip to the Blue Mountains on Thursday we came back to Sydney today and as I type this, we're preparing to go to the Rockpool Bar and Grill for our last evening in Oz. All in all, a holiday of a lifetime with a great bunch of people. I suspect touchdown at Heathrow next Wednesday will be a very hard landing indeed. But, before then, a few more adventures in HK to look forward to...