DM and MM's Orange 2022 Diary

Day 3 - Nile Street Cafe, Brangayne Winery

Thursday, 15 September, 2022

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We all slept a lot better last night. Scully was much more settled, which meant M. and I could get a good sleep too. We slept in until after 8:30. When we got up, it was raining steadily outside, as forecast. I took Scully down to the grass for her toilet, which was wet but not as cold as I expected.

I checked my email and found a message from Jenny’s nursing home, saying that she had passed away. I called my mother to tell her the bad news.

We had breakfast (mine was the leftover pizza from Parrot Distillery), then had showers and got ready to head out in the wet. M. wanted to go to Ever Coffee Roasters cafe, which we’d spotted yesterday on the other side of the railway station. It’s a short walk from our hotel, just over the railway line. They had some tables outside under a wide awning, so we could sit while M. had her coffee, though it was pretty chilly. While we sat there, we could see through a window into the home decoration shop next door, where a toddler was crawling around and sitting in a display box of little coloured samples of carpet.

We walked back through the rain to the hotel. Then we hopped in the car to drive out to Spotlight, so M. could look through some of the fabrics there to choose some for making bandanas. The navigation system in the car tried to take us along a road that had been permanently blocked off, and then when we went around we ended up on another road that didn’t exist in the navigation database. Fortunately I had a good idea where we needed to go, so we ended up there without too much trouble. Scully got to explore the store while M. found a bunch of fabrics she wanted to buy and then added a spool of cotton thread to it to make up the minimum amount to let her use a $20 off voucher. Only she’d miscalculated and would have got the discount even without the cotton!

From there we drove over to the Nile Street Cafe, where M. had booked us in for lunch. Earlier she’d checked by phoning up that they had somewhere we could sit outside but out of the rain, which they confirmed. The cafe was a converted house in the middle of a residential street. It looked nice and had a fairly fancy menu. I had the battered barramundi with chips and salad, while M. chose the home made crumpets with vanilla butter and jam from the all-day breakfast menu. They looked really good and M. confirmed they were.

Home made crumpets
Home made crumpets, Nile Street Cafe

After finishing these, we decided to have some sweet treats. M. again chose off the breakfast menu: banana bread with vanilla mascarpone and honey. I got a slice of a Persian tart, which had lots of almonds and pistachios in it, topped with dried rose petals, and infused with rosewater, which was really nice. As we ate these, the rain eased off and stopped, and the sun came out, filtering through the clouds. We decided it would be a good chance to walk Scully around the block to get some exercise before leaving. But as we packed up to go, the rain started up again, and it was heavy by the time we went back to the car and climbed in.

Persian tart
Persian tart, Nile Street Cafe

While at the cafe, I found and contacted Brangayne Winery, which was the first one to come up for dog-friendly wineries in the region. I left a message and a woman phoned back to confirm that yes, we could bring our dog and do a wine tasting, indoors out of the rain. So we drove over there through the rain and entered the vineyard, which had a nice view over a broad valley looking back towards Orange. The tasting was in an old apple storage shed, which the woman there told us was used to store fruit from when the property was originally an orchard, growing apples and stone fruits. It converted to a vineyard in the 1990s.

Brangayne vineyard
Vineyard, Brangayne Winery

We did a full tasting of the wines: Pinot Grigio, Sauvignon Blanc, Riesling, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Merlot, Shiraz, and the winery’s signature “Tristan” blend of Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Shiraz. The Chardonnay was named “Isolde”, as the winery itself was named after Brangayne, a handmaiden of Isolde as told in the Arthurian legend. We bought a half dozen bottles to take home, mostly the Merlot and the red blend, which were the best in our opinion.

The rain had started again heavily while we were inside, so we decided to wait a bit before braving it to get back in the car. After a while, I realised that there was a loading ramp under cover, and I could go get the car and back it onto the ramp and then we could load the car without having to deal with the heavy rain. So we did that and then headed off back to Orange.

Brangayne driveway
Driveway, Brangayne Winery

At the hotel, the rain had stopped again, and we set out for a bit of a walk to give Scully some more exercise.. But it started raining yet again, and we decided to keep it short, just going around the block. But almost back at the hotel we walked past a quilting supply shop, which M. decided to have a look inside to see what sort of fabrics they had. It was similar to the sewing shop we’d found yesterday, with a couple of women in the back sewing quilts. M. found a nice Aboriginal style pattern material which should bought a metre of, and then we headed back to the hotel.

Summer Street rain
Summer Street, the main street of Orange, in the evening rain

For dinner we decided to order take-away from an Indian restaurant. I chose The Upper House, which was highly rated online. We had dhal tadka and malai kofta with rice and a piece of roti. I considered some of the meat dishes, but after having duck two nights ago and lamb last night I didn’t feel like any sort of meat tonight, so went for the extra vegetarian option. I went out in the rain again to pick it up, leaving M. and Scully in the room to stay dry. The food was very good, with the dhal being a bit spicy even though I’d asked for mild when they asked how spicy we wanted it.


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