Paul Juchima

Cellar One is an online destination for premium quality wine brands available to anyone at staff rates (or as we say here at NPM, The concept is simple: you sign up to their membership portal for free and with that comes quality wine brands at below retail prices. Brands such as Grant Burge, Hardy’s, Petaluma, St Hallett, Croser, Leasingham, Stonier, House of Arras and Bay of Fires, are just some of the wines you can order AND you get FREE HOME DELIVERY anywhere in Australia on all orders! We’ve partnered with Cellar One to give our readers free access to their membership along with $20 of wine credits available for use in their online store.

Well I decided to take up the invite from Mercedes-Benz Melbourne to attend the Mercedes-Benz ACCELERATE Drive Day held at Sandown. This is a day usually reserved for Mercedes-Benz’s VIP clients, so I gladly put my hand up to test out the latest wheels on and around the track. She’s just a tad handy behind the wheel and took to the wet, greasy Sandown track like a duck to water!! We then had the opportunity to test our driving skills, with some bald tyre driving in ESC mode, some solid ABS test braking from 100km/h to 0km/h and a fast lap opportunity guided by our professional instructor around Sandown.

In a year of expecting the unexpected, it was another Irish-trained victory in the Lexus Melbourne Cup as Twilight Payment led from start to finish in the $8 million ‘race that stops a nation’ ™ at Flemington Racecourse. Twilight Payment became only the second horse to lead from start to finish and win the Group 1 after Might And Power, after being given a beautiful ride by Victorian jockey Jye McNeil who notched a memorable win in the Lexus Melbourne Cup at his first attempt. It was a second triumph in the Lexus Melbourne Cup for 27-year-old trainer Joseph O’Brien, who became the youngest trainer ever to win the Cup when Rekindling won in 2017. Lloyd Williams recorded a record seventh win in the Lexus Melbourne Cup, sharing the ownership with family and friends.

For miles to be seen, there were huge wind farms full of white turbines, generating megawatts of energy in the high wind region prior to arriving at the destination. To see the scale of work that was executed, no doubt at times under extreme heat (50-60 degrees celsius temperatures at their peak), just reiterated that goals can be achieved through hard work and commitment. And that’s just one of the great benefits of how weekend road trips can help you achieve your goals. Whether it’s Joe Blow in the local diner, or a local family in a small village, they open our mind to new cultures and ideals and help appreciate what we have in our lives.