Steakhouse Dinner

On the last night in the Hunter Valley, Steph and I wanted to invite Bill and Wendy for dinner (on their own vineyard) as a way to thank them for giving us an amazing opportunity.


Bill brought over some bubbly to the cellar door veranda. It turned out that it was the first chance they got to sit on that terrace and enjoy a drink. We toasted getting all the white wine off the vines in 10 days, completing our short careers as Australian grape pickers.

We had made our first serious attempt at cooking in a long time - a New York steakhouse dinner with many sides to fill our hunger from the long days out on the vines.

--

Tomato, Red Onion and Blue Cheese Salad with Walnuts and Australian Olive Oil
(made by Steph)

--

Porterhouse Steaks with Garlic Herb Butter
Peter Luger’s German Fried Potatoes
Baked Onions in Parmesan
Creamed Spinach

Tyrrell’s 2004 Chardonnay ‘Vat 47’

--

Strawberry Cheesecake
(a cheat from the supermarche)

Curiosities Down Under

By now we know that Australians really do say “How ya going, mate?” and “No worries” all the time. But I’ve always been interested in parts of language that have extensive terminology due to their importance. Cheese in France, has countless varieties. The rain in England has ample words to describe it.

Steph and I are just getting the hang of language for the open road, pub, beach and bbq. Allow us to share what we've learned so far.

The 'ute' - Along with 4-wheel drive SUVs, this is the outdoorsman's car of choice.

Driving - lots of O’s in Oz

Servo: service station (serve-o)

Rego: registration (pronounced rej-o) for vehicles, university, or any other usage

Bottle ‘o: bottle shop, often drive-through

Thing ‘o: what’s it called, thingamabob

Arvo: afternoon (arv-o)

Smoko: smoke break

Drive, Revive, Survive - The roads promoted plenty of rest stops, some in New South Wales are called 'Driver Reviver' and even have free coffee, tea and biscuits!

Kangaroos Crossing - Driving is dangerous at night - we never tried it. Everyone seemed to have their own advice for what to do when kangaroos cross during the day. We were told that when one is sprinting out in front of you, another one will always follow. The key is to not swerve. Keep on a straight course and you might have to hit to avoid putting yourself in danger.

Milk cans and beer kegs serve as mailboxes.

Main Streets - Dusty towns we drove through usually had a predictable main street. There was always a General Store & Gas Station, "Milk bar", bottle shop, butcher, one or more 'op shops'. They are usually built with traditional awnings. In England the smallest of villages may or may not have a post office, but certainly will have three pubs to choose from. Here it is much of the same except the pub is called a 'Hotel', serving the more traditional role of public house that has rooms for rent upstairs.

The Pub - An obvious place for Australians to have lots of words.

Hotel: public house (pub)

Coldie: cold beer

Stubby: bottle of beer

Glass of Beer: 200ml

Pot of Beer: 250ml

Schooner: a little less than a pint

Grog: alcohol

Just ordering a half pint was confusing enough for Steph. Not to mention phrases like… If you are a ‘two pot screamer’, you may become ‘fool as a goog’ and even ‘technicolour yawn’. I’ll let you guess at those.

The BBQ:

Barbie: bbq

Snag: sausage

Rissole: flavored burger

Dead Horse: ketchup or sauce

Tucker: food

Free Public BBQ facilities are available in parks, campgrounds, rest stops and just about everywhere. Just push the button and get cooking if you ever need an impromtu grill-up.

Beach and rockpools - Coastal towns also had rockpools and sea baths

The Beach

Thongs: flip flops

Togs: swimsuit

Cricket Grounds and Bowling Clubs - Cricket is played at designated areas with traditional white uniforms here, unlike in India where makeshift matches are pretty much anywhere. At formal events, you might even see women in Fascinator race hats! Lawn bowling clubs are also still big news in Australia. You will find that they are not just for the old men like in Europe. In fact young people have figured out that they sometimes serve some of the cheapes beer in town.

Working on the Farm – We would get ‘up at sparrow’s fart’ and the day would go ‘slow as a wet week’.

Yakka: work

Ripe: alright

Sanger: sandwich

Bushman’s hankie: blowing your nose in the ground

Iconic Souveniers

Here are some unusual items to take home from down under. Unfortunately we have no room!

Surf Board - It seems that surfing was a hobby for most Australian men we met along the coast at some point or another. Surfers affectionally call boogie boards 'shark biscuits', and wave runners are nicknamed as 'mozzies' for their buzzing sound and general nuisance.

Surfers also reccomended a few quintessential Australian products to us around the campfire, such as 'Itch off' for blue bottle jellyfish stings, and 'no fly' to keep away the famously annoying Australian flies on land.

Swag: a roll-out bedding that serves as a sleeping bag and waterproof tent.

The Esky = cooler or cool box. An essential item that is taken very serious by australians. Esky brand have made an exceptionally successful version that is synonomus now with the product. (like Band-aid or Kleenex, in the US).

Finally, it's a bit cheesy, but there is a need for protective headwear here. One cliche souvenier would be a cowboy hat or one of the fancier white ones.

Australia Day

Family Feud - What does one do on Australia Day?

(Family Fortune in the UK)

We had no idea what to do on this national holiday, annually on the 26th of January. Everyone we asked along the way gave us their version.

Our Survey said:

5) Picnic at a local cricket match.

4) Listen to the radio top 100 on 'Triple J' from 12 noon, for 12 hours.

3) Go to the beach.

2) Have a bbq.

'thongs on a van'

And 100% of Aussies surveyed, said...

1 Get drunk.

What did we do on Australia day?

It's a national holiday so we had the day off from work just like everyone else. We had a big lie in before our attempt to fulfil a patriotic duty. Without friends party to attend, we packed our bbq and drove to the beach listening to Triple J. The local butcher gave us some 'snags' (sausages) on the way and we made it to Newcastle in time for lunch. It was packed. Luckily they had sea baths off to the side for us to lay in. Nothing crazy - just a good summer day at the beach : )

Farmer Chris

We learned from Wendy just how important the climate can be on a vineyard. The 40 degree plus heat made for wild weather almost every day in the hunter valley while we were there. One night the winds made the violent downpours look like waves from the sea were crashing up against the windows. On another stormy evening, we went round for dinner to the house where Bill would often go out to the back porch to survey the horizon and see what the storm was doing.

During our month in the wilderness I picked up some natural barometers to predict the weather…

Rain is on the way if:

- Red clouds or a western rainbow in the west

- Cows lie down, or stand facing the wind

- Seagulls stand on the beach, rather than wading out at sea

- Milky halos appear around the moon or sun because of moisture

- Stronger scents come from flowers also due to moisture

- Certain flowers close from atmospheric pressure: Dandelions, Tulips, and Scarlet Pimpernels (aka the poor man's barometer).

Broke Village and its Inhabitants.

Goodness knows from where this village got its name - having been here for a week now, we still haven’t gotten to the bottom of this mystery. We do however find it a fitting place to be staying, broke as we are! Europeans first came to this area in the 1820s and Broke flourished because it was on the convict-trail north of Sydney. With only 400 and some people today, the village has need for only one general store - there’s also a café-cum-pub, two rustic country churches and a play area, but that’s pretty much it. There’s a big town, Singleton, only 20 minutes away with a supermarket.

This village is set amongst some stunning hills and is surrounded by national parkland - the Yengo National Park on one side and the Wollemi on the other, both World Heritage sites. OF course, it’s now filled with vineyards too and boasts some of the region’s finest wine. The wine tradition here has the soldiers of WW1 to thank - grapes were planted in the soldier settlement blocks after the war in Fordwich (just East of Catherine Vale vineyard). As with anywhere in Australia, the Aboriginal tribe who inhabited the area beforehand are now recognised and in Broke’s case this was the Wanaruah tribe, ‘the people of the hills and plains’ - ancient cave paintings still remain but Chris and I haven’t managed to visit these yet.

The most interesting thing about Singleton (the nearest town) and its surrounding villages such as Broke, are the people. For me, I found so many comparisons with people back in my beautiful homeland of Stalybridge and, more so, with Oldham - the town I’ve been teaching in for the last two years…

Singleton, the nearest town with a McDonalds!

Singleton is a huge mining town - as was Oldham - and has become rather wealthy because of this. We could hear distant rumbles and bangs sometimes in the evenings as the explosions went off in the mines. When we were camping at Lake St Clair, we’d been really impressed by how many of the locals came for the day with their speedboats. There’s obviously a lot of people in this town that can afford that. Bill explained how miners are paid a huge amount of money, many of them earning far more than he ever did as Deputy Head of a prestigious Sydney boarding school. He explained how, consequently, few of the children in Singleton (and thus Broke and other surrounding villages) want to continue with their education because they can earn a very good wage working at the mines, just like their parents. I could easily compare this to teaching at Counthill and many of the working-class children I taught for the past two years - no interest in education whatsoever as it just hadn‘t been a feature in the success of their parents’ lives. The jobs available to them locally do not require university educated people. Why should they want to carry on and do A-levels when they can get a job at 16 and earn a good wage without the need for passing exams? Hmmm. This is often the case in industrial or suburban towns in Britain I guess, but still the government insists on pushing pupils to do A levels and go off to university.

A few of the pickers we worked with were of school age and I really enjoyed talking to them about their plans after school. They were brilliant - so friendly. Mostly, their parents had some kind of farm whether it be an orange grove or olives, or else their Dads might be tractor drivers/fixers/mechanics for other farms.

Emma, 15, had applied to leave school after year 10 and start her apprenticeship in hairdressing - I was shocked at this initially, finding this way too young to leave school (in the UK, the minimum is year 11, age 16). Her apprenticeship had fallen through at the last minute and she’s absolutely gutted to have to go back to school in a few days to complete year 11. She’s going to have to wait another year now to start her apprenticeship and feels like she’s wasting time. However, she will spend two days a week out at a college doing more vocational-style training, which I found interesting. I feel hypocritical now thinking this is a good thing for her - I was so against this kind of thing when I heard it was available for some of the year 11s I taught, preferring them to continue with their history and science and get a ‘proper education’! However, speaking to Emma informally and not as a teacher, I realised just how practical these two days a week were for someone who really didn’t have an interest in school.

Her sister Jade, 18, was the first in her family to ever stay at school until she was 18 (just like me!) but now, she doesn’t have a clue what to do (just like I didn‘t!). She had an interview with Woolworths today and thinks she’ll just work there for a while before she goes to college to do Leisure and Tourism. This is probably so boring for of you but I’m so interested in finding out what choices young people have and what opportunities are provided by the government. Jade has not even thought about University and hasn’t got a clue what she’d even do as a degree - I completely understand her predicament. These girls have grown up on a farm owned by their grandparents and managed now by their parents. But they’re from a generation that is encouraged to stay on at school. What are they to do with their qualifications now? I’m so very interested in this social dilemma.

Moving on from my attempt at a Question Time debate… Chris and I did giggle every time we drove into Singleton (“A Clean Town”) and read the sign “World’s Largest Sundial, Turn Left”. We turned left and did indeed see a sundial, but… it wasn’t that big. We’d never break it to them but we honestly can’t agree that this is the world’s biggest! I just love the pride though. I love driving into towns and seeing ‘clean’ or ‘tidy’ town underneath - they’ve all won awards for this kind of thing and I think that’s great. It’s about time we did this in Britain though we’ve got a lot of cleaning up to do up North if we want to win any awards! Hehe.

Learning the Ropes

Wendy has developed an excellent system for picking over the years. Her three-row process uses pairs of pickers to go frame by frame with enough bucket boys to keep the team moving briskly though each row of grapes.

We were instructed to cut as close to the grape bunches as possible, and avoid including any bits of leaves or stem. We also had to cut out any bits of grapes that had been affected by bird attacks or the Petridis grape disease.

Bill and Wendy would ensure quality a second level control by overseeing the bins, which when filled with glistening fresh grapes, were a beautiful sight. I had a taste on the end a few rows. I must say that they were some of the freshest I’d ever tasted and varied quite a bit from one varietal to the next.

Bucket by bucket, we side stepped our way to the end of each frame, then each row. Grape picking may sound both tedious and boring to you, but we kept ourselves entertained with chit-chat with the locals, eavesdropping on the teenagers’ gossip, and even a few audio podcasts of “60 minutes”, the US news magazine programme - I think Steph is now addicted! Sometimes I would be called on to the more laborious job of bucket boy, away from Steph, my picking partner. This worried Steph on the first day, when she asked “ Are you going to be bucket boy for ever?”



Aisha, the Lawson’s black lab, was an experienced vineyard dog. She often kept the team company and included us in her play sessions with rubber toys. She also has the curious habit of taking a bunch of grapes in her mouth and finding a suitable place to bury it.

Off the vines, we were very keen to learn more about the winemaking process. Wendy was extremely outgoing and included us in the daily updates of how the grapes were looking from the results that came in.

Sugar level 11, Acid 7, PH 3-4

Weather plays a huge factor in the last few weeks - the right time to pick is based on good attention to PH, sugar and acid levels, strategic predictions, and a little luck from mother nature.

If she couldn’t show us other areas of winemaking, she was on the phone to neighboring vineyards to let them know that two visitors would be stopping by. We went to a winery to watch how grapes were taken from the bins and de-stemmed, then crushed and filtered. The winemaker, Michael, was proud to show us his process and let us sample pure, unfermented grape juice - delicious!!

Grape pressing

De-stemming

Tasting pure grape juice

'the machine'

Wendy also tipped us off to head down to the edge of the property at nightfall where we could see her neighbor using ‘the machine’ to shred grapes from vines mechanically overnight.

During our short-lived career as Australian grape pickers, we managed to pick all of the white grapes off the vine for this year’s harvest. We sampled these over dinners with Bill and Wendy. She made us spinach dip, seafood pasta and cake.

The Semillon we picked is the primary white grape from Bordeaux and has been a very successful grape for the Hunter Valley for many years. It balances fruity, crisp and spicy as a younger wine with fresh lime aromas. Semillon can then matures into a buttery white after cellering for at least five years. We then picked Verdhello, a Portuguese grape that was originally brought to Australia during the convict days and planted here at the Fordwich soldier settlement. It produces a white wine with citrus and tropical fruit flavours that also yields a oaky taste. And finally Chardonnay, the rich grape of Burgundy and California which has become Catherine Vale’s flagship wine. Their winery produce the wine in American oak barrels that give what they describe as a creamy mouthfeel.


Since 1997, the Catherine Vale vineyard has produced award winning wine from the vines overlooking the Wollemni brook and hunter range.

Lake St Clair, Weekend Adventure

After our first day picking at Bill and Wendy's Chris and I went off for the weekend to Lake St Clair, just north of Singleton. What a beautiful place this is - like somewhere that's dropped right out of a fairytale. We fell in love immediately and, though we couldn't bring ourselves to part with the $16 for the first night, promised ourselves that after one night out in the wilderness for free, we would return here for our second night.

The heat:

This weekend was ridiculous. Seriously. On Thursday (our picking day) the temperature had reached 41 degrees just as we stopped. This heat continued over the weekend and we really couldn't cope. On Friday, we were so hot that all we could do was read in the shade all day - but then it became too hot to even read. We couldn't wait to get to Lake St Clair so we could at least cool down by swimming. We were so hot on Saturday (even after swimming in the lake) that we drove back into Singleton- the nearest town and practically all the way back to Bill and Wendy's in Broke - just so we could sit in the air-conditioned car for a bit and buy a cheap ice-cream from McDonalds - ridiculous. We were too hot to do anything else!

TOO HOT!

While feeling sorry for ourselves for being European and unable to deal with such heat, we did enjoy watching all the families playing around in the water - this place is a haven for people with speed boats and jetskis. There were a lot of local families from the mining town, Singleton, enjoying the last weekend of the Summer Holidays as well as the Australia Day weekend.

Chris cooking up our steak dinner before the tornado...

The tornado:

Wow. We have never experienced anything like this. This day was as calm as could be wind-wise. No breeze whatsoever. Imagine our surprise then when the strongest wind EVER ever came from nowhere in NO time. No warning, nothing. Everything blew away - our wine glasses, our wine BOTTLE, pots, pans, our boxes with our camping stuff in! Everything except the steaks and mash potato which we hastily shoved in the car! I had to spend the next half hour salvaging all our camping stuff from people's windshields (knives and forks!) and underneath their cars!

Weirdest thing ever. It was such strong wind, we couldn't believe. It must've been a tornado caused by all the pressure of the hot weather. Wow. Weird and amazing.

More amazing wildlife - we saw many parrots

in the trees directly above us

Chris goes fishing

... but no catch

6:00am Rise and Shine

6:15 AM Wendy loads the truck with water and supplies before briefing the team.

Wendy kept the picking team efficiently organized. Bill was in charge of the heavy machinery. The picking teams would typically go through three rows at a time. The guys often took on the duty of bucket boys. I happily took on thiss chore for variety, but I think my picking partner Steph got a little lonely when she asked me ‘Will you be a bucket boy forever?’ We were able to chit chat and evesdrop on our fellow pickers to keep the clock ticking while the mercury was rising. The group of 21 was a mix of mostly international backpackers and local teenagers. The girls were busy gossiping and the guys were looking forward to getting a lucrative job in the enormous mines nearby.

Bill in a rare moment away from the tractor, and hauling bins full of ripe grapes.

The grapes that were snipped off the vine (with as little stem and leaf as possible) dropped in to buckets, the buckets were carried over to huge bins where any extra leaves or moldy grapes were removed. Bill then hauled each bin away by tractor for pickup by the truck and the efficient process started again. The early morning Semillon grapes were more round and much easier to pick, while the egg-shaped Verdhello was a lot harder to get to since the leaves and vines were fuller (and our bodies were no doubt a bit dehydrated).

Wendy baked brownies or banana bread each day for the team on break.

I think the thermometer had already hit 40 degrees when we were done with our batches. We all deserved a cold beer on the porch, and some shade to cool our overheated bodies.

One tired grape picker

Catherine Vale Vineyard

The day had come - we finally found work in Australias hunter valley, famous for wine and the birthplace of Shiraz. A vineyard finally called us back when they decided the grapes were ripe for the picking. For us it was high time we roll up our sleeves, put a few hard days work in, and replenish some of our funds spent on the car, gas and barbecues.

Normally picking around here doesn’t start until Australia Day (26 Jan). But it was such hot weather in 2009 that most people thought the harvest would be mid earlier this year. Then there was 'heaps' of rain in December and the sugar levels dropped a bit, so picking was set back a full week.

It was not at all easy finding a job picking grapes in the Hunter Valley. In truth, I couldn't believe we found a vineyard like Catherine Vale that still existed. Most of the larger operations we found were either streamlined modern or tacky fairytale properties. We had enquired about work at one very polished estate. The American girl greeting us was so enthusiastic she tried to guess our reason for dropping by, "Table reservation? Tasting!? Private function?? ...Wedding!!!?"We started slowly walking backwards out the door. One vineyard even had a festival stage for the upcoming Tom Jones concert on its lawn.

Catherine Vale

We narrowed the search to the smaller properties from then on, but the outlook was pretty bleak. One owner laughed at my search for an old-fashioned vineyard that would pay hard working travellers cash in hand. These days were long gone she said. Tax inspectors come in regularly now. They even park outside taking photos of license plates.

Cellar Door and the Lawson family house, formerly the Old Uniting Church Manse in Singleton until Bill and Wendy moved it from no 1 Church street in 1993 and re-assembled it here.

But where had the true romance of winemaking disappeared to? It seems that traditional corks aren't the only things that have disappeared in Australia. I was defeated and now just in need of a practical way to buy wine for camping. She laughed again at the question for where one could buy re-fill wine at a discount like the plastic containers you buy in France. How old fashioned - this was done away with years ago. Un-sealed bottles were against all health and safety government guidelines.

The Cellar Door

We were therefore incredibly lucky to arrive at Catherine Vale. Bill and Wendy offered to let us stay in their amazing cellar door, which is actually more of a banquet hall in a unique country church. That night Wendy had us over for a roast chicken, with potatoes, stuffing and a salad on the side. We couldn’t explain how good this tasted after a few weeks of canned chili and makeshift pasta. Bill and Wendy have created their vineyard from scratch. They even moved the house from nearby singleton, and rebuilt here on their beautiful hunter valley property. Unfortunately Bill told us how the Australian wine industry is in a depressing decline at the moment due to a massive oversupply. Steph and I were also very interested to learn how they built their dream of vineyard from the ground up, and also how their four children are now have lived all over the world.

We woke up in the mornings with a sunrise view over the vines, and happily sat reading on the terrace in the evenings. The cellar door also had an industrial kitchen for catering that we used to cook up a few meals.

It's fair to say that our grape picking arrangement was more of luxury wine holiday retreat so far...