12 wines

It's been a couple of days at the winery and gosh, how much have we done! We're thrilled to be getting involved in nearly the whole wine-making process, well, except for actually making the wine - no new batches are needed at the moment. But, Elena and me bottled the first vanilla port, a new release for Shannonvale Winery. We got to do pH tests, stelising of equipment, and then bottling of the wine into snazzy bottles coming all the way from Italy, as it seems Aussie bottles are not sophisticated enough. You need a certain rhythm to fuction this machine and it can be a bit stressful - Elena had problems because her hands were sweating so I took charge. She then took charge of the corking, well, they're not corks, they're caps. We were using a $6,000 machine. You press two side buttons that elevate the bottle into a spinning mechanism which secure the screw top, and you have to listen for an appropiate sound to know when it's been completed. Pretty cool stuff. We also helped the owners at the Mossman show, a sort of community fair with local produce and funfair included - we didn;t go on any rides, each ride was $7, I don't know how the little kids could afford it. Because it started to rain we didn't really have much to do so Trudy introduced us to all 12 wines, although only a few drops of each. The ports were delicious, especially the orange and grapefruit ones, I'll be taking some bottles of those back... you never know, it might get boring on the flight home.
We've also been talking about labels, there's going to be a label make-over and the new ones look really classy.
We did some fruit-picking too: kumquats and limes. I tried very hard not to scream and jump off the ladder whenever we encountered an unfamiliar bug, which was pretty often. There is so much crazy wildlife here. The bat reappered yesterday evening, he seems to like the bathroom (it's just a small insect-eating one, so he's alright apparently), then there was a bright green frog chilling on a leaf outside the kitchen, just like those you see in encyclopedias in the tropical jungle section.
There's a great veggie garden too. We go there before lunch to pick whatever we want. There are aubergines, green beans, tomatoes, celery, the best-tasting rocket I've ever tasted, spinach, peppers... and the list goes on.
Today we had most of the day off since we've got a lot of hours up our sleeve, as Trudy says. We cycled 10 km to the Mossman gorge, which is in the Daintree national park, the oldest rainforest in the whole wide world. It was ok, but a little bit touristy and on a par with the rainforest surrounding the winery. There are so many weird-sounding birds here, but I can never find the source, the trees are so tall and thick. There's a bird that sounds like a cat, one that sounds as if it's crying, or laughing...it's crazy.
We're pretty happy staying around here and giving a hand, it's really needed. Trudy seems to take on a lot of tasks and we want to avoid her getting stressed out , but as always with HelpX, there's a limit to the the help we can offer as you need a certain knowledge or generally an undertanding of how things are done before you can offer any significant help. But we're trying our best, and enjoying it at the same time. And that's what matters!