It was the annual Hunter Valley Hot Air Balloon Festival this weekend. Nicole and I decided to drive up for the festivities this weekend, electing to head up on Saturday despite the certain rain forecast. After all, Hunter Valley is NSW’s premier wine country, and what better excuse to indulge in an afternoon of wine tasting?

We hit up 5 wineries, and walked away with 1.5 cases. Mmm. Thankfully, the rain stopped by mid afternoon, and we set up our tent with no incident.

By the time we roused ourselves at 420am Sunday morning, the voluminous clouds from the day before had completely cleared out, leaving in its wake a blanket of quiet glittering stars. It was chilly out. 4 degrees C. But we were on a mission, to take pictures of lift off!

There were dozens of other likeminded photographers (although I don’t think anyone else camped), so we quickly formed a convoy to drive towards the launch point. But in a classic case of blind-leading-the-blind, the leading cars one by one got felled by spotty GPS and everyone ended up driving in circles for a while. Thankfully, Nicole persevered in her quest for the elusive cell tower signal, and we made it to the paddock in time to see the balloons fire up.