Aussie Wines in Oz, part 1

Just returned from 2 weeks in Australia. We stayed on the eastern half, near the major cities: Sydney, then Cairns (pronounced "cans" by the locals), and finally Adelaide.

A too terse synopsis of impressions:

Sydney
- the central downtown area is a lot like SF and NY (Manhattan). Modern tall buildings in a dense bustling downtown surrounded on 3 sides by water. And eminently walkable area. The views are spectacular with a magnificent harbor. Clean, green and lots of coastline along the harbour. Downtown prices are also like SF or NY.
- the suburbs are away from the downtown and have a much more sleepy but posh feel.
- there are numerous beaches. The one we saw, Manly, had very fine sand, and a very shallow descent, making for a 30 foot stretch of the glassiest water, about 2 inches deep, I've seen.

Cairns:
- a tropical town / city that has a tourist section of 8 x 3 blocks along the coast and the rest is where the locals live.
- tall hills covered by rain forest start to rise just a bit inland north and south of Cairns.
- we stayed in a B&B at the inland extreme of the city. The road ended after going up a bit of a hill. The "backyard" of the B&B was a creek tumbling down rocks forming several small pools. Beyond that was rain forest. In our room, I couldn't tell if it was raining as the sound of the water was a constant background mini-roar.

Adelaide:
- surrounded by wine regions (Barossa bah-rah-saw) to the north, McLaren Vale and the Adelaide Hills to the south/east and much further SE you have Koonawarra. The Claire Valley is beyond Barossa.
- the climate reminds me of northern California. Same temperatures, plants and rainy season (winter).
- we went on two wonderful shuttle wine tours to McLaren Vale and Barossa. They picked us up at the hotel, drove us to 4-5 wineries, included a nice lunch and a stop at a cheese/olive shop, too. The wineries were very well chosen; their goal was to pick wineries better than someone who had a car could pick. And they succeeded. Lunch in both cases was a enormous platter of meat, cheese, vegetables and olives. And the kicker was the price: $75 AUD ($55 USD) and $65 AUD.