Getting into the Hunter Valley

After a week in Melbourne trying to get used to the jet lag, it was time to fly over to Sydney for a week of conferencing. As you know, my flight was super early in the morning, and I arrived at Sydney International by 8am. I had to sit around for 3 hours at that point and wait for the conference bus, but luckily the airport had free wifi and I managed to entertain myself. Although...word to the wise...go with a fully charged laptop. There was only one solitary plug that I could find to recharge in the entire place!

Turns out quite a few people were on the conference bus, and I spotted a couple of people I know, but since I was so tired I kept myself to myself at that point and mostly slept on the bus. The journey out to the Hunter Valley was about three hours in the end, so we arrived about an hour before the drinks reception started. 

...and another

Lovely little bungalow

This did, however, give me a chance to check into my room, which was really cool. Like a lot of people, I had gone for the cheaper option of staying at the Leisure Inn across from the Mercure Resort where the conference was being held. This place was awesome though, as it was really big and spread out, with rooms in twos in little bungalows spread all over the place. In fact, my studio room was all the way on the other end of the place, so I got to walk across every day, which was lovely in the nice weather.

my wee kitchenette

Outdoor patio of my room

I had time to enjoy a luxurious bath in my giant hot tub in my room, then went across for the reception. Being the Hunter Valley, I was quite excited about this because I knew the wine would be very good!! And in fact the whole reception was great. We had to register for the conference here and were given our conference packs and present, which was a beautiful large wine glass (shown in le picture).

Present from the conference

This meant I got to use my present on the very first night. Hopefully, I manage to get it back to the UK in one piece!!

I got talking to lots of people at the reception, some of whom I knew but most of whom I only knew by name. I guess being a very chatty person is good at these sort of events. Sadly, I didn't eat too much from the platters of food they were passing around, so the wine went to my head very very quickly. But I think maybe I pulled it off.

Booooo Australian Strongbow

Three hours later, after the reception was over, pretty much everyone moseyed on down to the local pub, Harrigans. It was a pretty good place and since everyone was there, even more opportunity to make friends and contacts. I met a lot of PhD students and postdocs, and generally had a good time. Although, turns out Strongbow is not the same thing in Oz. Be careful everyone....it's called Strongbow, but it isn't!!!!

They're looking at me quite strangely right??