Months ago Trisha & I exchanged several rounds of messages; I was keen to get her expert opinion on how we best spend our time in her gorgeous (huge!) country. One idea we quickly said yes to, was spending a weekend all together South of Sydney, in a spot called Kangaroo Valley. Trisha & Ben kindly took the lead on booking us a place to all stay together. All we had to do was show up :)
Friday Roadtrip
Trisha & Ben had office commitments on Friday and would be joining us at the house later Friday evening. Armed with Trisha's car and a handful of recommended spots to catch out on the way, we hit the road for Kangaroo Valley. Normally it's a ~2 hour drive but we opted for the more scenic, slow route. Once inside Royal National Park, it was a slow, windy, beautiful road. Paige still gets car sick on occasion (thankfully it's much less often vs. when she was little), so she smartly had the window down and a "sick bag" in one hand, ready for anything :) Thankfully she did OK.
The weather wasn't great on drive day . . . it started out as just patches of light rain, and gradually moved towards torrential downpours. Armed with raincoats, it's didn't stop us from popping out of the car to explore a few places. Kiama Blowhole and Lighthouse was a fun stop. Kiama translates as “where the sea makes a noise” and apparently their blowhole is the largest in the world. We were mesmerized by many rounds of massive sprays of water blowing up through the sea cliff hole.
Prior to settling into our Kangaroo Valley house we hit up a grocery store for weekend essentials. Lately the girls get completely crazy hyper in grocery stores. I have no idea why, but they consistently loose the plot in the aisles of grocery stores, much to our annoyance. It makes the whole shopping experience drawn out and distracting. We'll chalk it up in this instance to "car cabin fever" :)
Kangaroo Pad
We accessed our Kangaroo Valley AirBnB pad and unpacked the groceries.
In contrast to their grocery store behavior, the girls were super helpful & proactively put away all the groceries. Way to turn it around, P&S! Rain coming down outside, we cozied in for the night. We indulgently let the girls watch a movie (Transylvannia 2) while we worked on a few things. For dinner we enjoyed a tasty roast chicken & veggie dinner, thanks to chef Doug.
Trisha & Ben's flight in from Sydney arrived later in the evening. They rolled in close to 11:00pm and we chatted for a bit before all hitting the sack.
Lamingtons, Take 2
The girls were excited to see Trisha & Ben in the morning. We all enjoyed a leisurely breakfast, a huge spread of sourdough bread, eggs, avocado, yogurt and the like. Sadie watched attentively & learned from Ben how to start a fire, so we were all cozy warm on the rainy day.
The first order of business for the day was to make a traditional Aussie lamington cake. Lamingtons are made from squares of cake, coated in an outer layer of chocolate sauce and coconut sprinkles. Opinions differ on whether a traditional Aussie lamington has a layer of jam inside and/or whipped cream on top. We opted for the full shebang, including all of these things!
As a quick bit of background, we tried to make lamingtons with Trisha when she visited NYC back in July 2017. We weren't able to get all the precise ingredients in NYC so we took some liberties on appropriate ingredient substitutes. Turned out getting the ingredients precise in this baking recipe is crucial! We ended with a "lumpy bumpy cake" (as we coined it), nothing that even resembled a lamington! But it made for some really good laughs and memories, so all was not lost!!
All this to say, there was a lot on the line to correctly bake a lamington this go-around, especially on Australian soil, haha! Trisha & Ben had pre-packed all the necessary ingredients, so the them & the girls were ready to get started. The baking process was smooth and the end result was delicious!
Into Town
We headed into the town of Kangaroo Valley for a peek around, a coffee & nibble, and a few extra provisions. Our favorite stop was Hampden Deli where the girls got to pick out a delicious loaf of sourdough and one of the workers advised on a trio of tasty local cheeses. It felt like we were in the Hudson Valley of New York and we were loving every moment of it. There were signs posted all over town of ways to support the local community, following the devastating fires that had recently ripped through the area. More on that here in Doug's post.
Rain is OK!
It poured rain pretty much every minute of the day & night over our Kangaroo Valley weekend. Any not just any rain . . . torrential downpours! It was raining kangaroos and wallabies :)
But we didn't mind. After the massive and devastating fires that have ripped through Australia - including Kangaroo Valley - the country needs rain immensely. So we were happy the rain was helping squash lingering fires and bring hydration back to a land overrun with drought. A few times during the day we'd venture out during a dry patch - out the backyard and over to the river - only to have the rain come pouring back down within minutes!
Homecooked Meals
A much enjoyed & appreciated aspect of AirBnB pads is always the ability to cook our own meals; feels more like home. Over our Kangaroo Valley weekend we enjoyed many tasty, home-cooked meals, loaded up with fresh & local ingredients. Highlights were Saturday evening's dinner of butternut squash & pumpkin soup . . . thank you, chef Trisha! And Doug's yummy pancakes on Sunday morning, the first time since NYC we've been able to have them!
Spotted Back to Sydney
We all packed up our stuff on Sunday morning, fueled up with breakfast and hit the road back for Sydney. We had two cars so we each paced our own journey back to the city. We were *very* excited because we had two wildlife sightings on Sunday drive! Kangaroos and wombat!! "See a wild kangaroo in Kangaroo Valley, Australia" officially checked off our Aussie bucket list :)
In spite of the rain, our Kangaroo Valley weekend all together was a big hit! Great to see & experience a new part of Australia - especially one that is full of so much natural beauty and local food - and create new, rainy memories with friends :)
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