Chateau McFarland is Open for Business - Post1

G'day mates! It's been a loooooong time since we've posted, but that's because Chateau McFaralnd is now open for business. Yes, we are 100% moved in and taking in guests. The first people to stay at our incredibly spacious 5-star luxury accommodations were my parents. We had a great time hosting them and exploring the city. And from what I can tell, I think they had a pretty good time too.

We started their visit by flying up to Cairns. Chris and I hopped a Virgin Blue flight up to Cairns from Sydney where we met my mom and dad at the airport after their long journey to Australia from the US (their route: Denver to Houston, Houston to Honolulu, Honolulu to Guam, Guam to Cairns).

Having not heard rave reviews about Cairns, we decided to stay in one of the resort town just outside of the city, named Palm Cove. My mom had made arrangements to stay at the Melaleuca Resort, which was just great. Right on the beach and along a strip of some great restaurants.

Our first activity was taking the train from Cairns to Kuranda, a former hippie village atop the rain-forested mountains that line the coast. Michael from Relax Tours showed up at promptly 9:00AM trying to be as Australian as humanly possible. He looked almost totally defeated after our response to "Crikey! Where are you mates from?" was a monotone, "Sydney." Regardless we got on the train and headed to the top of the mountain. This is something that I do NOT recommend doing in Cairns. The train smells like old hippies and depending on the seat that you are assigned, you can't see many of the sites or hear any of the narrative on the video the play in the cart. If you are interested in doing the train, spend the extra $50 and ride in the first class cabin.

On the way back we took the much more efficient SkyRail. The SkyRail is a 7.5km gondola that takes you above the treetops of the rainforest to the Kuranda village. It offers some breathtaking views and makes several stops along the way where you can walk through the rainforest and hike on some trails. One of the most impressive things we saw the Barron Falls waterfall. It had incredible force and beauty.

After we were back on firm ground we rode back to the Melealuca with uber Australian Michael at the wheel. On the way, we say a paddock full of wallabies (I still can't tell the difference between a wallaby and a kangaroo). Australian Michael was truly thrilled. I think we even got another "crikey!" out of the paddock full of wallabies.

The next day we took a snorkeling trip out to the Great Barrier Reef. This was truly an incredible experience. The colors of the reef were vibrant, we saw thousands of fish and even spotted a small reef shark.

Despite all of the hoopla regarding shark attacks, they aren't the deadliest thing in the ocean. In fact, it was jellyfish season and Australia happens to be home to one of the most poisonous creates in the world - the box jellyfish. Because of this, we had to snorkel in full body suits - including hoods and mittens. Swimming in mittens is not exactly efficient, but considering one touch of the box jellyfishes tentacles would kill you in 10 minutes, I didn't mind.

All in all, our trip to Cairns was great and we enjoyed seeing new parts of the world with our first visitors to Australia. In addition to the great scenery and good company, we also enjoyed some great meals. It seems there are great restaurants around every corner and in every city.

After Cairns, we headed back down to Sydney where my parents spent a week with us. Here are some pictures from our Cairns adventure.

Stay tuned for Post 2 of my parents visit!

Ladies of Sydney - Your Dad is Trying to Mow the Lawn and Can't Find His Favorite Lawn Mowing Shirt

We all know "that" shirt. The one that dad mows the lawn in every weekend - or used to back in '83. It's the two-tone plaid get up that's a little bit lumberjack and a little bit Chuck Norris-ish dude on the Brawny paper towels packaging.



Well, the grass is getting lengthy, mom's pissed, and dad can't find his shirt. Ladies, it's time to bring this crisis to an end, please unharness your over-sized belt, take off dad's weekend lawn mowin' flannel and let's get on with it. This is much more than just a domestic crisis ladies, it's a fashion crisis. I'll be the first to admit that I love my leggings and I own a bright orange shirt (two of them, actually), but when you start wearing clothes that could have easily been picked up right next to a Coleman cooler and a poop trowel at K-Mart, that's where I draw the line. Ladies, please look in the mirror before heading out this week. If your outfit is either a) discovered in your father's closet, b) plaid and not your school uniform, or c) an over-priced "designer" shirt-dress that despite weeks of starvation your tush still peeks out, please, please choose to help solve a domestic crisis. Give dad his shirt back, so he can mow the lawn, mom will pipe down, and we can move on without having to look back at photos of ourselves in five years and wonder how in the heck we thought we looked good.

Weekend in the Valley

This past weekend we decided to get away from the city and headed to the Hunter Valley wine country. We left a little early from work on Friday and drove the 2+ hours to hunter valley. Side note: what Sydneysider's call "highways" is a little deceiving...it is really just a two lane road with tons of lights and cars and traffic...go figure. Anyway, after a little city traffic, we finally saw a real "highway" with posted speeds of 110 km/hr (~70 mph). The road took us through some amazing country side in a national park. We even drove over a bridge that had giant wind socks so the trucks could tell if it was safe to pass.

We rolled into our weekend palace, Patrick Plains Estate, around 7pm. We then managed to get into Cracked Pepper for a nice dinner before calling it an early night. On our way to dinner we spotted our first wild Kangaroo...of course our camera was back at the hotel so we have no proof.

On Saturday we started our wine tasting early with our first stop at Hungerford Hill. We picked this spot mainly for the building, which looked like a giant wine barrel. Our next stop was Tempus Two / Roche Wines, which had a very impressive industrial style Cellar Door (aka tasting room). At both locations we learned about the most well known Hunter Valley wine - Semillon, which is crisp and and full of citrus at young and becomes golden with honey scents as it ages. We rounded out Saturday with Tastings at Poole's Rock, Pigs Peak, and our favorite of the day - Wombat Crossing.

We took it easy on Sunday morning with a late breakfast and reading the paper. On the way out of the valley we stopped a couple more wineries (why not?) - the most notable was Tinkler's Winery.

Big Mama's

The first thing that my mind conjures up when you say Big Mama is Martin Lawrence dressed in drag wearing a fat suit. The second thing that my mind conjures up is a big 'ol I-talian (the lesser known Texan spelling of Italian) woman mixing a giant bowl of pasta. Luckily for us, Big Mama is the Italian restaurant around the corner and it's fabulous! We both had some amazing pasta mains and a tomato/mozzarella/prosciutto salad for an entree. The crazy thing was, everyone who worked there actually spoke Italian - shocking! If there is such a thing as the mafia in Australia (and by mafia I mean Italian mafia with don's named Guido and 300 lbs. hit men named little Joey, not the under belly), Big Mama is where they would hang out. Big Mama knew her way around a hearty Italian meal...and an apple cake. Another weekend and a another good meal.

Mexican Food Part 2

As mentioned earlier Mexican food here is almost non-existent…So we have taken to making our own thanks to the help of the Tex Mex cookbook. On Sunday we had a little Mexican Fiesta for one of Jess’ colleague’s birthday. We made the tortillas, spanish rice, and guacamole, while they provided the chicken and beans for fajitas (or as close as you can get to fajitas).

We had attempted to make tortillas once before with mild success, but this time they really turned out well. Making tortillas is a two person operation (for us anyway) – I would roll them out and Jess would heat them in the skillet. We had quite a nice assembly line working. The key this time was rolling them out to be nearly paper thin and heating them just right in the skillet. The Spanish rice turned out to be surprisingly easy to make and tasted fantastic.

The guacamole also turned out well – but homemade guacamole runs in my family – my brother was the winner of the 1st Annual Kingwood Area Sadaam Hussein Memorial Guac-Off. For my recipe I used 5 large avocados, 1 qtr onion diced, 1 half tomato diced, fresh lemon juice, cumin, garlic powder, salt, & pepper to taste. The key here is the perfect avocados – which are readily available in Australia at the moment (for a price - $2.50 each!). Also I used a potato masher to get the perfect consistency – smooth and creamy with medium sized avocado chunks…yum!