At the not so crack of dawn on Saturday morning we headed out through the Western Suburbs of Sydney passing such notable towns as Kellyville and Pitt Town toward the Blue Mountains, crossed
the Blue Mountains into Lithgow and across the NSW plains toward Mudgee. The drive was about 4 hours and the scenery was beautiful. This is a picture looking out on Wollemi National Park from Pearsons Lookout on the way to Mudgee. My 
excitement was growing as we drove closer and closer to Mudgee as I had been assured by my co-workers I was sure to see a Kangaroo in the wild. Other than a Kangaroo road kill (very sad) and a few great road sings there were none to be seen on Saturday.Mark and I had a wonderful lunch at Elton’s in
Mudgee, explored a few wineries (Farmer’s Daughter and Peterson’s were our favorite) bought some wine and generally checked out the tiny town of Mudgee where on a Saturday all of the business close at 1 PM. The main street in Mudgee is called Church Street. This is a picture of the beautiful St. Mary’s Cathloic Church.After a nap and a cheese plate at our B&B it was off to the famous Henry Lawson’s pub. This was a traditional NSW pub, and the first real pub I had visited in Australia. When a man approached us with Raffle tickets I was thinking, oh how nice raising money for a local charity, but oh no I was wrong. Apparently I have come to learn, nightly, at pubs across Australia they hold a Meat Tray Raffle, where the winner of the raffle takes home a jumbo tray of meat. Of course Mark and I joined, this raffle was not just a Meat Tray Raffle, it was a Seafood Platter Raffle! 1st place was a Seafood Platter, 2nd place was a Meat Tray, 3rd place a bottle of wine. I was giggling away asking Mark if we win the Meat or the Seafood just exactly what do you think we will do with it? It’s over 90 degrees outside, we have no cooler and we are 4 hours from a refrigerator big enough to keep it. Other thoughts such as “smart Aussies who found a way to pacify angry house wives with trays of meat when their husbands have been at the pub all night” were running through our conversation. We bought 3 tickets and sat on the edge of our seats as the numbers were drawn, we missed the 2nd prize Meat Tray by one number, but won 3rd prize a bottle of wine. This was not just any bottle of wine either, it was a German bottle of wine that we have never heard of. There we were sitting in the middle of Australian wine country, and we had won a German bottle of wine!
Sunday morning we were up early, on some great advice from our B&B we went to the outskirts of town to look for some Kangaroos. After scanning the horizon
repeatedly, I spotted two ears under a tree. We got out of the car and walked up a dirt road for a better look. Sure enough there were three Kangaroos chilling under a tree in the cool shade. They were as interested in us as we were in them, took a good look then hopped away after about 5 min. It was amazing to see them in the wild and to see them hopping along at such close proximity was definitely the highlight of my weekend.We took our time checking out the
lookouts and sights along the road on our drive back to Sydney on Sunday afternoon. All in all it was a great weekend min-break…it was fantastic to get out of Sydney and has sparked my travel bug to check out the rest of Australia! -kel
