When I got up this morning, I opened the blind in the kitchen and found myself looking at a kangaroo. Of course, we headed outside with cameras and it was worth it.

I got this photo of a joey – first one we’ve seen.

We didn’t feel like doing much today – especially not sitting in the car for any extended period of time. I was going to call Lizz to confirm plans for meeting in Phoenix but the phone in our unit was not working and the reception staff didn’t know what to do to fix it. We decided to head to the info centre near Cessnock to find out where we could find internet access in the Hunter Valley. There were 3 choices – and one was just down the road from our condo – just not where the receptionist had told us it was. After a quick stop in Cessnock for some groceries and lunch at Maccas (who don’t have internet access) we headed to the Pokolbin Village Resort where we discovered FREE internet. We sat on their veranda and uploaded the blog stuff and chatted online to Lizz. We were there for quite a while and no one tried to speed us up or suggest that we leave. It was great.

Once everything was updated, we decided to drive around the valley a little more and see if we could find the lookout which was marked on a map we had. It was a fairly long drive up the hill – on another ridge at the top –

but the view was awesome. When we came down off the mountain, we noticed this mailbox

and it reminded me that we hadn’t mentioned the mailboxes here. It seems that you can use anything that will hold mail for a mailbox – we’ve seen old stoves, beer kegs, plastic buckets and lots of others. I can’t imagine what Canada Post would say if someone tried that at home.

After driving around awhile, we spotted a couple of winery signs that we really liked.

I can’t believe that our time in Australia is almost up. Tomorrow we head to Sydney to stay at a hotel near the airport before our flight on Friday. We’re sad to be leaving and we’re already trying to figure out how to manage another trip downunder.

Temperature: 19 C – mostly sunny with a few showers