I booked a plane ticket on Pacific Blue (one of two no frills discount airlines in Oceania) to Melbourne, leaving the day after I arrived in Auckland. Despite having unburdened myself of some wine the previous day, I had kept a few bottles with me to give as gifts to wineries I planned to visit along the way (a trick I had learned in Italy a few years ago). The trouble was that wine bottles are rather heavy and classified as a terror-inducing prohibited carry-on item, so all of my clothing now became a carry-on item instead. God help us if some idiot figures out how to make a bomb out of cotton.
I passed the time in the airport figuring out rugby (the US even won a game, nevermind that they beat Fiji) and feeding the birds (yes, there are birds flying around in the international terminal of the Auckland airport). Turns out Pacific Blue is owned by Virgin Airlines, and both Virgin and Pacific Blue had the same curious habit of playing music during takeoff and landing. At first I thought this was to distract nervous fliers, but as it turns out the purpose is much more practical; the music choices reflect the culture of the place where they are played. On my Virgin flight from Seattle to LA for example, indie rock was played during takeoff and pop rock as we touched down. Taking off from Auckland indie rock was also the music of choice (albeit with a New Zealand twist), while touching down in Melbourne was the sort of mixture of 80's rock and techno that we all hoped died in Germany 10 years ago.
This wasn't the only thing wrong with Australia. The southern half of the country is going through one of the worst droughts and heat waves in recorded history, while the northern half is under water from flash floods. The vineyards here have already suffered crop losses of 30-50% due to sun damage, with the possibility of additional losses in the next few weeks before harvest. Things are so dry that brush fires have started breaking out all over the areas north and west of the city, and several vineyards and even a small town have literally been wiped off the map. Fortunately the place I was going was south along a peninsula with more of a marine influence, but things are clearly not going well for much of the area.Passing through customs proved a rather annoying experience. While New Zealand took no time at all and even included humorous anecdotes about preserved vegetables, Australia was much more intense, demanding to sift through my camping gear and checking to make sure that I hadn't surpassed my wine allowance. They even made me pull out my unopened pack of trail mix to determine whether I had devised a new way to introduce invasive species via dried cranberries and nuts. It was around 7pm by the time I finally made it through, and I still had to find my way to Dromana, a tiny beach suburb about 40k south of Melbourne where Colin and Mary lived. I had instructions to get there via train to Frankston, which departed regularly from downtown Melbourne. I shouldered my backpack, found a shuttle downtown, and settled back to take in the city.
The city is quite large and modern, with a river knifing through skyscrapers reminiscent of the loop in downtown Chicago. Its the second largest city in the country (after Sydney) with just under 4 million people in the city proper. It is relatively young, having only been founded around 1850, but still retains some pretty interesting stone architecture and green spaces that seem to be lacking in a lot other modern cities of similar size. Although at the moment I had other places to be, Melbourne is a place where I could see myself spending a bit of time. Maybe I will.
The bus station was still sweltering despite the late hour, but I managed to track down the train station without too much trouble. On the train ride south I observed that Australians certainly have their own style, some of it borrowed (the women seemed to have just figured out the little black dress) and some of it entirely their own (the men still wear the same flashy t-shirts made famous by the extras in Crocodile Dundee). Colin and Mary met me in Frankston, and we drove the 15 minutes south to their place in an ancient Renault that looked like it had been on the losing end of a chase scene with Inspector Clouseau.
Colin and Mary had found accommodations for the harvest with an Australian artist named Jill, who was in her early 50's and had two children (one around my age and the other still finishing college in Perth). The house itself was fantastic, full of eclectic pieces of artwork and very comfortable, with a back porch that had a distant view of the ocean. There was a second building in the backyard with two rooms, one that Colin and Mary were staying in and another that housed Jill's studio. They had set me up with a mattress in the studio, which was a welcome surprise from the camping mattress on hardwood floor I had expected. The studio had a window near the ceiling that faced west, and around midnight the full moon shown through it and filled the room with soft light. Awesome.We headed to bed rather early, having to get up around 7 to make it to the wine festival the next morning. The festival itself was at the Lindenderry Resort (which also had its own vineyard), and featured about 35 different wineries, mostly from the Mornington Peninsula (it was their festival after all). Turns out that one of these wineries just so happened to be Escarpment, the vineyard where I'll be working harvest in New Zealand next month (http://www.escarpment.co.nz/). And Larry McKenna, the winemaker I'll be working for, just so happened to be the guy that was showing their wines. I met him for the first time that morning, and was pleased to note that we shared a similar taste in footwear (teva sandals). He may not look like a winemaker (more of a rugby coach or a retired army drill sergeant), but the man makes some damn good wine. He was very pleased that I wasn't a scrawny hipster from the NW, although he did comment that he planned on putting more meat on my bones. Given his reputation for drinking and eating well, I couldn't be happier.
The keynote speaker for the festival was Jancis Robinson, who among her other accolades is the editor for the Oxford Companion to Wine, my bible during the early days of working in the tasting room at Cristom. She is, quite simply, a legend. We spent the day polishing glassware and pouring wine for the morning and afternoon tasting sessions, trying our best to stay in the air conditioned places and escape the 114 degree blasting everything outside (a new record!). 
After the glasses were set and the wine poured, we would retire to a back room and press our ears against the wall, listening to the same lectures and sipping the same wine that the attendees had paid $900 for. Granted we were working for free, but a few hours of polishing and pouring in exchange for musing over which vintage of grand cru burgundy is showing better sounds like a good deal to me. And while we didn't get to attend the posh banquet that night, we were allowed to take home any of open wine that was left over (it gets dumped anyway). I daresay we had a far better time that evening eating pizza and conducting our own private tasting (featuring 24 different pinots from 5 countries) than we ever could have in some decadent hotel full of largely pretentious and stuffy people. Life is good.
The festival ended Sunday afternoon, and we spent the remainder of the day lounging around with Jill before enjoying a fantastic dinner. The only thing I really had planned for this part of the trip was the wine festival, and as my flight doesn't leave until the afternoon of the 14th, I have some time to kill. I have a feeling the beach will factor largely into this equation, although Tasmania is only about an hour away by plane...
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