On our way to dive the SS Yongala, we visited a Spanish Castle in Far North Queensland

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The "Great Green Way". I lived in Port Douglas for the past 8 months and about 2 weeks before leaving, it was the first time I heard about it. The Great Green Way is the road between Cairns and Townsville and to my surprise there's plenty to see in between both cities – “Nature’s playground” is the motto used for advertisement. http://www.greatgreenwaytourism.com/.



I had tought about doing the SS Yongala dive for some time now and I finally did it, just one week before leaving Port Douglas. The SS Yongala is a wreck from 1911 and worldwide considered a top diving spot.



It wasn't easy getting 2 days off work and finding someone to go diving with. Fortunately, an American friend of mine, Julie Remp, who's working as an underwater photographer in Port Douglas, managed to get the same 2 days off.

The SS Yongala dive can be done from Townsville or from Ayr (Alva Beach) and we chose to do it from Ayr, even though it was about 1½ more hours of driving. The advantage is that it only takes 30 minutes to get to the dive site from Alva Beach, compared to the 3 hour boat ride from Townsville.



We planned to do a road trip on the way to Townsville to see some of the places advertised in the PDF file of Great Green Way brochure that we had.

We left Port Douglas rather early, at about 8:30am. We got on Julie’s car and drove to Cairns, because Julie had to do something there and also to get the PDF brochure printed. First thing when we got to Cairns was to get coffee at a place we both had been to before (quite good, can’t remember the name) and from there, while she did what she had to do, I went to a travel agency to get the brochure printed.



I went to a random office that was called “Tribal Travel Agency”. The first thing I noted upon arriving was a sentence written along the border of the entrance: “Enter as strangers, leave as friends”. When I entered, I was greeted by a very friendly, outgoing woman who turned out to be the owner. She had no problems in me using her computer to print out the file. While I was doing that, Julie came in and she asked the woman (Erryn Wells) about things to do on the way to Townsville and she ended up showing us photos of her and her kids doing trips in the area and she mentioned a few places with waterfalls and swim holes. She especially recommended Paronella Park, a park south of a town called Innisfail, which has a hand-built Spanish castle. She went on about how a Spanish man had made this for his wife and how romantic the whole place was. Then she mentioned a “love tunnel” and all sorts of places in this park. Then she asked us if we were a couple, to which we said no. “Too bad, but go there anyway, it’s a remarkable place” she said. After being with this woman for no more than 10 minutes, I hugged her when we left.

A couple of weeks later, we sent her an e-mail of ourselves in the love tunnel, congratulating her on being such a good "matchmaker".



After Cairns we headed south and the first stop that we made was in a place called “Bubinda Boulders”. The place has a short walking path with some really nice views, but the best thing is the swim hole it has, especially good in the hot North Queensland climate. We stopped there for an hour maybe and then made our way to Josephine Falls, only about 30 minutes from where we were. We stopped there just enough to have a look around, but we didn’t stay long, because the place was more crowded than we expected.



And we finally made it to Paronella Park. The park itself is magnificent. It’s a “Spanish castle” in the middle of Far North Queensland, that belonged to José Paronella, a Spanish man who dreamed of having a castle. José was of a humble family. He was due to marry a woman (arranged marriage) in Spain and before getting married he went to Australia in search of work opportunities. He did different jobs and he managed to buy a piece of land after a few years. Then he started buying, improving and reselling cane farms and in 11 years became a multimillionaire. He went back to Spain to get his bride-to-be, but after not knowing of him for 8 years, she had already married someone else. Her mother offered José to marry her youngest daughter and so he did and then took her back to Australia.



José invested in a land which is now Peronella Park. He chose it because of a waterfall there is. In 5 years he designed and built with help of other people (but doing a lot of it himself by hand) his castle. The property had two cafes (in which they had an ice cream making machine), the first tennis courts in Queensland, he also produced his own electric energy (30 years before it was available in the rest of the state), a ballroom, movie projector, etc. It was opened to the public in 1936. Joe, as José was known, was an entertainer and he liked organizing events and having people enjoy the park. He was a visionary in his time. The whole story about the place and what is the park nowadays, in the following link: http://www.paronellapark.com.au/history.html



After visiting Paronella park we had to drive to the dive center in Alva Beach were we had arranged to spend the night. Along the way Julie asked me to drive for a while. I hadn’t driven in Australia before (on the wrong side of the road), so that was a good experience for me and not too difficult considering it was an automatic car. The rest of the way we stopped in a few places to get gas and something to eat and we made it to Alva Beach at around 10pm. Shower and off to sleep in the 6 people dorm. Link to the dive center: http://www.yongaladive.com.au/



The next morning we woke up before 7am, had a light breakfast and made our way down to get the dive forms, payment and gear sorted for the dives. It was weird being a “dive customer” since I had spent the last 8 months working in dive boats. I made the usual mistakes in the paperwork that I made customers correct (my turn to be an annoying customer). We were 11 divers and we had a briefing about the dive before being driven to the beach in a sort of old army truck. When we got there, we had a group photo and then off in the boat. It only took us about 25 minutes to get to the site and the weather was really good. We were separated into 2 groups; ours composed mostly of dive professionals and experienced divers, which was really good. As soon as I jumped in the water I noticed a very strong current. We waited for the guide to lead the way and we went down holding on to a rope all the way down to the wreck. The current was definitely strong.



The SS Yongala sits on its starboard side at about 28-30 meters and the edge of the port side is at about 14-15 meters. We went down a line which is attached to the stern. The wreck is full of small bait fish (so much that in some areas they completely cover the wreck) and all the big fish there are somehow bigger than normal (as if the wreck sunk with a cargo of steroids). We saw a massive Loggerhead Turtle, a Guitar Shark (which is not an actual shark, but a species of ray), big Queensland Groupers, Spadefish, etc. On the first dive, when I got to the bow, I was at about 28 meters and the current struck me full on as I was unprotected by the wreck. There was a line made fast to the ocean floor at about 7 meters from where I was and kicking against the current as hard as I could, it must’ve taken me about 30 seconds to reach it. I really felt out of breath when I reached it, and needed a few minutes to calm down again. The dive back to the stern was along the direction of the current, so a lot more chilled. We had to do 2 safety stops (as was required) at 10 and 5 meters.



Back on the boat, we had about an hour of surface interval and in the meantime, one of the crew members told about the story of the wreck (he talked for the whole hour, so it was all very detailed) and we had things to eat and drink.

SS Yongala wreck dive

The second dive, I’ve got to say I enjoyed it a lot more, there wasn’t as much current as in the first one and we already knew what to expect. Julie had the photo camera and I had the Gopro for the first dive and we switched for the second one. Both dives I’ve got to say were excellent and the SS Yongala certainly deserves its reputation as a top dive spot. We talked about how cool it would be to do a night dive there (maybe not too safe though), considering the vast amount of food the sharks have. It’s known there are plenty of bull sharks around the wreck and we were really expecting to see one, but they’re rarely seen during the day as they hunt at nighttime.



After we got back, we had lunch, packed our gear and got back on the road to do the 7 hour drive with minimum stops along the way to get back to Port Douglas that night. We both had to work the next day. I got to drive on the way back again.

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