Relaxed, Hippy Vibes

Last weekend was Dan and my first wedding anniversary and we decided to take a weekend off from life in general.

No renovating, no housework, no friends - no anything-that-is-familiar or a typical part of our life.

In fact, we decided to leave Queensland altogether and revisit our mutual-favourite region of Australia, the Northern New South Wales Hinterland.

Dan booked us into a farmstay near Tyalgum, which was advertised as 'pet-friendly and gay-friendly.

As he put it, it looked like 'our kind of place' - we both love staying in places like this. We get to take our dog AND stay with people we invariably find to be friendly, accommodating and easy to talk to and share a glass of wine with.

In fact, half the reason we advertise our own holiday-rental as 'pet-friendly' is because we know that the people who rent it are invariably more relaxed and easier to deal with.

This time, we stayed at the home of Pete and Chris, and shared the home with another couple - also celebrating their wedding anniversary.

Between us, we had four dogs - a border collie, a kelpie, a Belgian shepherd and a pug.

We also spent quite a considerable amount of time between us out the back drinking wine and chatting.

This was the view from the house.

See that Mountain in the distance? Dan and I climbed the nobbly nose bit on the left on Saturday.

It was pretty steep. In fact, in parts, there were chains to help you get up and down.

We both used them with the descent (pictured below), but on the way up - motivated perhaps by desire to get to the top after 1.5 hours of climbing, or the fact there was a queue to get onto the chains - Dan and I both crawled up the rock face like spiders, chain-free. It was great.

For the rest of the weekend, we explored the region and Chris and Pete's property. Croquet was clearly a popular past-time.

This is one of Pete and Chris's dogs, Joey. I gotta admit, I don't usually go in for kelpies, but this one won me over. Sharp as a tack, and quite lovely. Dan bribed him with a piece of sausage so I could take this photo.

We ended up revisiting a lot of our favourite little towns, places we last visited a year ago on our 'Minimoon' - the week-long roadtrip we took after our wedding.

The Northern NSW Hinterland is an unbelievably beautiful part of Australia.

I love the lush, verdant, overgrown scenery - it just reeks of abundance, tropical climate and relaxed hippy vibes....

Tumbulgum, Chillingham, Uki, Tyalgum - these are the towns we'd live in if we could make a living, living in such towns.

And you know what? Out of those four towns, turns out we've been pronouncing every single one of their names incorrectly.

"You two couldn't sound more like tourists," a local pointed out to us on the weekend.

I think we're OK with that.