Day 127, 128, 129, 130 - Derek & Kayes - Mooroopna & the surrounds - Monday 20th, Tuesday 21st, Wednesday 22nd, Thursday 23rd February 2012

We left Ben and Gillian's in Melbourne at about mid-morning and started the drive back to Derek and Kayes in Mooroopna; along the way we stopped at Tahbilk winery where we tasted all their home grown wines from Shiraz's to Merlot's and chardonnay's to Riesling's. Derek bought a case, Stuart bought 3 bottles, mum bought a bottle and Soph & I got a free poster!! After all the free wine we had lunch at Tahbilk's adjoining restaurant, which was lovely. Soph had the corn fritter and I had homemade lamb pie with mash & salad; we shared, unlucky for me - the pie was much nicer! As we were walking round the restaurant we noticed a sculpture on the fireplace called Embla; this is a half human / tree piece that according to Viking legend was the first female human. Both Sophie and I were really impressed, but were even more impressed when we realised it was made by Kaye!!

After our amazing lunch we all headed to another winery and even more free wine tasting!! After plenty of wine we headed back to Derek and Kayes for dinner. After a great dinner with Kayes homemade orange cake to finish (amazing) we all grabbed a touch and went walking in the bush looking for possums and kangaroos… all we saw was spiders!! However, it was the first time that mum & Stuart saw how amazing the Australian stars are at night. Tomorrow I'm up early with Stu and Derek to go fishing for cod in the Murray River and to lay some bait and nets to hopefully catch some yabbies'.

Up at 6am and I can still taste wine in my mouth! Surprisingly I felt great and got dressed to meet Stuart and Derek. We loaded the car with rods, nets and then went off to the stream next to Derek's house to check the yabbies' nets. Yabbies' are like a crayfish but with bigger pincers, the smaller ones we would use as bait and the bigger ones we would steam and peel later for dinner!

Bingo, we checked the nets and had about 15 yabbies. Once they were loaded up on the car we drove down the tracks to the Murray River and set up the gear - I was pumped, thinking I was going to catch some sort of super cod and feed the whole family for months… well 2 hours in and not one fish! Then about 20 mins before we were due to leave I hooked a fish. Now I'm not great with guessing weight but this fish was a cod and it was… well… it was… kind of… ohhhhh… ok it was about 5 inches long! Soph rode down at about 8.30am but sadly she missed me landing that huge cod! Problem with the cod was firstly, it wasn't going to feed a baby cat and secondly, it was too small to keep so we had to put it back! Still I was the only one to catch a fish - that's all I'm saying! Back at the house we realised it was Shrove Tuesday so Derek cooked us all pancakes with syrup, lemon and sugar. After breakie Derek showed us around his amazing garden; it's got tomatoes, runner beans, zucchinis, pumpkin, corn-on-the-cobs, lettuce, onions, potatoes, limes, oranges, apples - the list is endless…. Oh and he has 2 chickens supplying fresh eggs every morning! Soph & I loved it!

In the afternoon me and my bro went to the local for a few beers whilst Soph stayed and played with Connor (Derek & Kayes dog - Kelpie breed) and mum went with Kaye to the little florna park to see the native animal's.

That evening Derek & Kaye cooked pizza in the garden (yes they have a pizza oven in the garden, you can now see why we loved it so much!!). We all made our own type of pizza then cooked them and shared them out; the first couple were a bit burnt but were still really tasty. All full, we headed to bed. I'll be back up at 6am for more fishing with the boys, big cod here I come…

Up again at 6am and loaded into the car, same story as yesterday but this time I caught carp, sadly it was the same sort of size as the cod the day before, but I could see in the guy's eyes that the game was on… 2 fish to me, nil for them!! After the fishing (did I mention that I caught 2 and the boys caught 0?!) we went to the port of Echuca. After a walk round and a flat white (the best Aussie coffee ever) we boarded a paddle steamer down the Murray River. The sun was out and we all just relaxed, caught some rays and chatted, mum even had a go steering the ship - ha ha!! After the paddle steamer we went back to the house and Stu and I got ready to go out and have a few beers whilst Soph, mum and the others had a BBQ with Jeff, Kaye's brother, and his wife. Me and Stuart had a great night, we left the house at 7pm and got home at midnight. Stuart even threw up 4 times! Good night - say no more!

We woke this morning and all pondered on what to do. Derek, Ad and I decided to venture out, try a few more of the wineries and go to Paradise Falls, whilst Lesley, Stu and Kaye decided they wanted a bit of chill out time in the garden.

Derek, Adam and I jumped in the car and within an hour arrived at our first stop - a cheese tasting shop! We tried all of the lovely cheeses and decided on 3 of them of take away and seeing as we spent over $30 we got a cheese free - this was to be our lunch accompanied by lovely freshly cooked bread stick. The shop also had a small winery so thinking it would be rude not to try some wine, we ventured over for some trying. 20 minutes later we'd tasted several wines, learnt a bit more about wine making and Derek had also bought a couple of bottles of the fizz for our forthcoming family weekend in Lorne. We had a quick coffee before venturing off to our next stop of Browns Brothers winery - this is one of the bigger, more famous Australian wine makers and it was interesting to see the difference in the set up to the other wineries we'd been to. We tried some more wine before heading back out to a little winery which also had a lovely garden for us to stop for lunch. We bought a bottle of red and settled down for our lunch of cheese, bread and red wine - yummy!

Back in the car and I was starting to feel a little queasy - a combination of car sickness, too much wine and rich cheese may have been the culprit! We shortly arrived at Paradise Falls and started the 25 minute walk. The views were to die for and when we arrived at the falls the setting was quite spectacular even if there was a slight shortage of water cascading down! We chilled for a bit and laughed as Derek tried unsuccessfully to catch some water in his drinking bottle, before heading back to the car for our 2 hour journey back home.

Back at the house I headed to bed as I was still feeling sick, whilst everyone else tucked into Kayes homemade green thai curry. I very jealous as it smelt delicious!