Day 8 – Wildlife and Wine in the Yarra Valley

Clint: After running a few errands, we headed out the Yarra Valley, which is about an hour outside of Melbourne. Our first stop was Healesville Sanctuary. It is a wildlife sanctuary to many species native to Australia. We saw Kangaroos, Kaolas, and Tasmanian Devils among many other species of birds and reptiles. Our favorite part were the “meet the keeper” sessions where the folks describe the care of each of the species in their sanctuary.

After the sanctuary, we headed to a few of the many wineries that make the valley famous. Badger Creek was a nice “local” winery where we could speak at length with the wine makers. They actually make many wines from blueberries, and they were not too bad. Yering Station is one of the larger ones so it was much less personal, but had beautiful grounds and a large tasting room with dozens of different wines to try.

We returned back to Melbourne for another great meal by Bac Ninh. This time she made us sesame lamb shanks and they were fantastic. They had a large crowd over for dinner and we enjoyed meeting them all. It reminded us of our weekly Sunday evenings dinners with Theresa’s family.