NSW Southern Highlands: Wine, Bikes and more

Whenever Bill and I spend more than a few days in a city, we like to plan an excursion into the nearby countryside. Tuesday, we rented a car from carnextdoor, sort of the Airbnb of car rentals in Australia. The advantage was that I could specify that the car have a bike rack. We loaded our rental bikes onto the rack and headed south to the Southern Highlands. We parked in the little village of Bundanoon.

After a quick lunch at the local deli and a visit to the local bike shop for route recommendations. We set out to ride into Morton National Park. Overall, the ride was only 7.29 miles total, but the route took us to several overlooks this very impressive “Grand Canyon” of Eastern Australia.

Bill on the park trail just after entering the park.

This expansive view is from an overlook called Echo Point.

For once my selfie face is not all distorted. It helped that the light was such that I could actually see the screen.

These two were taken at Bonnie View lookout.

We took this at our last stop in the park at Grand Canyon Overlook. This beautiful canyon was created by the Bundanoon Creek, which is today, quite small. The are a couple of falls in the park, which were too remote for us to see. We really didn’t have the time, because we wanted to visit a couple of wineries on our way back to Sydney.

Although it took an hour and a half drive each way, we really enjoyed the day trip. The cute town of Bundanoon, high in the Southern Highlands, has a definite Scottish feel. Intentionally, I’m sure. And the park with its magnificent (bonnie) canyon was quite a treat.

On The way home, we stopped at two wineries, the first was Cherry Tree Hill Wines in Sutton Forest, where we really liked the whites and the second was Tertini in Mittagong. The wines at Tertini were really nice. We bought bottles at both stops and headed back to Sydney. You might ask, “why no winery pictures?” Well, in both places the industrial metal sided buildings were not particularly picturesque.

So, instead you get a picture of our car. We took Uber to where the car was parked. The exact location was texted to me 15 minutes before pickup time. We had to inspect for damage, upload pictures of all sides, including the car top, to the app. Then request a code to unlock the lock box to get the key. On the return we did that process again. It was not a particularly simple process. If I hadn’t need the bike rack, the local Budget/Sixt would have been just fine. But I needed the bike rack. The night before, the owner had texted me, “that he had chucked the rack on!” And that was worth all the hassle of picking up the car.

Thanks, for reading. We have a few more days in Sydney, so I’ll keep posting.