Beer tour and walking in Cataract Gorge 29th June 2007

We were in the James Boag's brewery this morning at 10am. You my think it's a little early to start drinking, but our guide said its the best time to sample beer. We shown the production areas and what they use to produce there flavours. Then taken to the production line and shown the canning. We saw a bar in the centre of the brewery where the workers take their breaks. The guide said about 20 years ago the workers had morning, lunch, afternoon tea and late afternoon breaks, were they could drink as many beers as they liked. This was until work health and safety regulations came in and stopped all that.
We enjoyed all these parts of the tour, but the best bit was at the tour bar. The guide poured 4 different types of Boag's beers 1. Premium 2. St George 3. Boag Draught and 4. an English Ale(which was like a really fizzy bitter, but nice). Our favour ate is Premium, which is in London now. So we'll have to wait and see if its in pub at home when we're back.
We left the brewery a bit tipsy and went to a walk around the city park. This is where we saw Japanese monkey in the centre of the park. They were playing and some were cleaning one another. Some of them were really funny play chase me, chase me.

We left the park and went to Cataract Gorge just outside the city. This is a walk along cliff top walks following the river. We had a picnic next to a lake with the Alexandra suspension bridge just in front of us. After lunch we walked over the bridge and followed the zigzag walk back to the car. This is a walk for a hiker rather than us. It was really work and we started to sweat a little so for the first time since leaving Dubai we walked around in our T shirts.
At night we went for a curry and some beers to celebrate my birthday early as we were going to Cradle Mountain tomorrow and we thought there might not be anything other than cabins and walking available. So we had an OK curry and lots to drink then headed to a Irish bar for some more beer and watch a live band. Fell in to bed later. Great fun.