We arrived at our hostel in Hunter Valley.The road was called Wine Country Drive - very apt! We jumped in the pool - what a luxury! We were so hot and the water was just what we wanted after a hot drive. We booked a wine tour for the next day and then we began Day One of the cookery school.The teacher was Rachel and the student was Chantelle.Risotto (or Rosalita) was on the menu! Chantelle was an excellent understudy and made a beautiful dish which went down well with a bottle of white.More lessons to follow.

The following day was the day of the Wine Tour!!! We had such an amazing day, not only did we drink a hell of a lot of sensational wine we had cheese and olive tastings too! We came away with 5 bottles of wine.Day two of the cookery school. Again Rachel and Chantelle cooked whilst Martyn and Dan relaxed... their turn was tomorrow! We made a white wine sauce (what else) with chicken and polished it off with 4 bottles of wine.

The following day we were due to move, but as you will have probably heard the flooding in Queensland had gotten worse and all highways East were closed. We spent the morning watching the news and seeing the devestation. The following email to my mum sums up our thoughts.

The severe flooding has totally changed our road trip plan, just wanted to let you know that we aren't in the floods but are only a few hours away. This has been Australia's wettest summer for over 20 years and 90% of the rainfall fell last night. There has been floods going on for weeks but the sudden heavy downpour yesterday has meant that 8 people have died and 72 are missing. We aren't in any danger but not sure what our new route will be. The east coast is now totally out of the option though as the floods have now reached the coast and are not just inland. Lots of roads have been closed and we may have to change our flights. Pretty gutted really and feel on a bit of a downer as the last few days of the road trip have been amazing. We will lose our money if we cancel the van (2000GBP) so we will have to go back over places we have already seen so that really takes the adventure out of things. the weather over here is rain rain rain now predicted for quite some time so that's also a massive shame as we'll be cooped up on the van.