With several blasts of hot air, administered by our pilot Sam Huggins, our blue and yellow balloon begins to wobble off the ground.
As we climb slowly into the cool Hunter Valley morning, I squeeze my 15-year-old daughter's shoulder, while trying to hide the tears filling my eyes. I focus on the unfolding scene beneath us, six other balloons strewn across the paddock below, gradually being readied for flight.
As for many teenagers, the last two years have been super tough for my daughter. COVID has played havoc with any sense of normalcy, interrupting crucial school and social bonding time, and during lengthy periods of isolation, devices and social media have provided both a lifeline and another layer of anxiety - with unrealistic body and beauty imagery ubiquitous - to an already stressful situation.
For Mila, there have been the added stresses of moving school and cities in year 8 and the need to settle into two new homes with her separated parents.
It has also taken us three attempts to get to this point, with the weather scuppering two previous flights.
Now, I'm hoping that this hot air ballooning birthday present will help her see a broader perspective on life. To remind her that there are exciting adventures to be had, even close to home.
Having had the privilege of ballooning above such evocative landscapes as Egypt's Valley of the Kings, near Luxor, and in the Red Centre, near Alice Springs, I know how (literally) uplifting the experience can be. Hovering 500 metres above a complex of 3500-year-old temples and tombs scattered across the African desert remains among my richest travel memories.
We arrive at our meeting spot, Peterson's Champagne House, in Pokolbin, in the pitch dark, and are quickly guided to a parking spot by torch-wielding stewards. It is only now that my daughter realises what her birthday surprise is going to entail and she cannot hide her excitement.
After checking in, we are allocated our balloon and pilot and marshalled to a minibus that will take us to a nearby paddock. Overnight, Balloon Aloft have been monitoring weather conditions, including prevailing wind strengths, before settling on an ideal launch site for multiple balloons. It is invariably in one of many paddocks, used by agreement with local landowners.
After arriving at the site we are given a safety briefing and shown how to crouch down against the side of the balloon basket, while holding onto to internal ropes, for a comfortable landing.
Meanwhile, as an orange pre-sunrise glow suffuses the surrounding landscape, our pilot and the ground crew are cold inflating the balloon using a gas-powered fan.
There are four compartments in the basket of our balloon and around 20 of us are soon clambering aboard, 4 or 5 passengers to each section. Our pilot Huggins now stands in a central position, firing up propane burners to heat the air inside the balloon above him, to make it rise.
We are the first to launch and our ascent is quiet, gradual and a tad ethereal, with a real sense of lift-off from terra firma.
We have chosen the perfect morning for our flight, the dawn light running through a spectrum of yellow and gold and the sky now tinged with mauve and blue as the new day breaks.
The only noise is that of Huggins regularly releasing bursts of hot air into the canopy above and similar rasps coming from the other balloons. As soon as we are high enough, we begin to see the morning mist strewn across the valley below, like patches of newly dumped snow, and as we rise, so too does the sun, above the coast.
Beneath us, one balloon after another follow us skyward, their bright colours making them appear like oriental lanterns against the morning sky.
There is the odd whoop of appreciation in the basket but mainly the mood is one of quiet awe. There is a captivated glow on my daughter's face that I haven't seen for years.
We sometimes take what is on our doorstep for granted but from on high, the beauty of the Hunter Valley landscape, reaching east toward Newcastle and the coast and northwest to the craggy contours of the Barrington Tops, is marked.
Vines fan out across the undulating hills, dams and other patches of still water glint in the sunrise, and the morning mist gathers and flows, in places, while thinning and dissipating in others. We track the shadow of our balloon across the landscape and revel in the unusual sensation of being high in the sky, but open to the elements.
Our flight lasts just over an hour and we don't cover a huge geographical distance in that time. We have travelled perhaps only six kilometres before Huggins begins to lower the balloon, by opening flaps in the canopy and releasing air.
Soon, we are hovering above some treetops, angling for an empty field. As we near the ground, I tense, the memory of a difficult previous landing, near Alice Springs, in which the basket thudded across the ground and then tipped, making me anxious.
This time, however, Huggins executes the perfect landing. After a couple of bumps and a short scrape along the paddock, we come to a standstill. Then, after we have all hopped out, everybody helps to fold and pack away the balloon.
Our adventure ends, where it began, with a champagne breakfast in the warm morning sun, back at Petersons Winery.
While many passengers have travelled from across the world for this adventure, for us it has been an enriching, father-daughter bonding experience on our doorstep. One that has helped us recalibrate and see a broader perspective, after a challenging two years, and left us both with treasured memories of the sunlit, vine-clad valley in our backyard.
Hunter Valley based Balloon Aloft offer flights, including champagne breakfast, from $265 (weekday special) for adults, $245 for kids (7-12, above 120cm tall). Weekend/public holidays from $349. See: balloonaloft.com
