Bushwacking!

Weekend catchup post number 1.

Saturday afternoon, fresh from some factory outlet shopping on Smith Street, we caught up with Neale, Arlene and Andrew for a frolic in the country. Destination: Heathcoate.

It was the first road trip I had done since being back in Melbourne (for some reason I don't count Daylesford) and it was a blast. The reason for the jaunt was a food and wine festival so it was hella worth it. Plus a certain Irish tourist got to see his first kangaroos, granted they were masquerading as roadkill but beggars can't be choosers.

The festival was fun but not particularly engaging. A good deal of wine tasting, some trying on of hats, some eating of pudding and sampling of olives. Fun, yes but also busy so there was a little too much hustle and bustle.

Thankfully, as the day wore on, the crowd the thinned and we were more able to intoxicate the viticulturists with our wit and personality just as they were intoxicating us with their wares. Devilish fun. We met some lesbians cleverly disguised as "friends", a man who was convinced his chilli sauce had the same properties as LSD and a classics scholar from Dublin University who had almost read Proust's A la recherche du temps perdue.

Even more funner than that, possibly the funnest part of the day, was the Alcolizer breath testers as you exited the showgrounds. All the drunkards who had patronised the festival queued up to share in the fun and to cheer on the biggest scores. Andrew, despite his height, managed to exceed the machine's limit, much to the delight of the onlookers. Somehow, Arlene, who seemed to have been knocking them back all day, blew a zero, which was reassuring seeing she already drives like a drunk and to actually be drunk would have seemed like a cliché.

The rest of the night went like this...



...and ended with someone picking up, someone else picking up twice, someone having a bad "e"xperience and a very cute someone falling asleep on top of me after being asked by the bouncers to wake up. Fun but tiring.

Tags: tourism, wine, victoria