Renovations

Yesterday, Josh declared that he was going to build another addition to our deck.

"You know those frames the wine barrels sit on? If I turn one of those upside down and put the spiky end on the ground, I reckon a pallet would fit nicely on the frame part and we'd have another bit of decking."

"Yeah, right." I scoffed.

"Nah, seriously! I'm going to take a pallet to the junk pile to test it. If it fits, come and help me lift the frame onto the ute. If it doesn't, I'll just leave the pallet there."

Ten minutes later, I was begrudgingly hoisting a metal frame onto the back of the ute.

Just as I reclined back onto the couch in the airconditioned donga, the door bell rang. (Josh and I have been "working from home" this week. We've had the aircon in the donga cranking while it's been SO HOT, and if we have any customers, they ring a bell outside the winery cellar door and we go to meet them.)

As I left to see who it was, Josh had his tool box and an assortment of screws, pallets and plastic sheeting.

20 minutes later when I was done - so was he!

I must admit, I was very skeptical when he first came up with this plan - but now we have double the deck space! It may not be the fanciest decking going around, but I love it!

Junkyard chic

Enjoying a drink on the deck

Holidays!

After working for 205 days straight (no weekends off, no days off, nothing!) Josh and I took a few days to have a break. Josh's mum manned the cellar door, while Josh and I went to Tamborine Mountain for one night, then Ballandean for two more.

Tamborine Mountain is about five hours south of Childers, and (if you couldn't guess) is up a mountain. We drove up a twisty, windy road through the jungly rainforest to arrive at a cute little town perched up the hill. Since we were only there for one night, we packed in as much as we could - visiting five wineries, a brewery and a distillery. We even visited a winery who had their own glow worm cave! (Yep.). A man-made cave filled with ten thousand or so teeny tiny glow worms. They were a lot smaller than I was expecting. Aaaand we also snuck in a visit to a cheese shop and fudge shop for me.

We stayed in this cute old manor house and had THE BEST fried potato skins at the Irish pub with no beer (on tap that night).

The next morning, we ventured back down the mountain and through a bunch of funnily named towns (stopping for a bacon and egg sambo), and through THE GREAT DIVIDING RANGE(!!!) to the Granite Belt. (The Granite Belt is QLD's equivalent of Margaret River).

Josh had a list as long as his arm of all the wineries he wanted to visit, so we did our best to tick as many off as possible that day. Despite a few being closed, we managed to visit half a dozen or so.  Being a Tuesday, there wasn't a whole lot open and we ended up at the pub for dinner (yet again).

Wednesday, our last full day on holiday, was pretty similar - driving around in the rain looking for places that were open. We ended up at The Barrel Room for lunch (YUM!) and our at Pyramid Roads winery for tastings and a chat with the owner (awesome!).

Finishing off our night with cheese and bikkies for dinner, we got an early night ahead of our epic drive home the next day.

The six-ish hour drive home was pretty uneventful. We stopped in Crows Nest for a bacon and egg sambo, and rolled back into Childers just after lunch.

While it was so lovely having a few days off, all the driving around meant we didn't really feel rested or refreshed. I think next time we're just going to drive two hours to the Sunshine Coast and veg out on the beach instead!

Waiting for our Glow Worm cave tour to start

Josh, hard at work

Our cute little room at the manor!

A castle! Filled with liqueurs!

The massive storm that ripped through Childers while we were away. Luckily, all our trees were fine, however just north of Childers a little town called Cordalba got smashed. Macadamia trees and cane fields were flattened and a few sheds were damaged. I'm not looking forward to the rest of storm season!