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Paronella Park
Just like out of a fairy book.We've just had the most wonderful experience. We drove off the highway and along 22 km of a country road to see a castle. A real castle.
We read that Paronella Park is a #1 tourist destination in Northern Queensland. We arrived at the castle not knowing much about it and hoping it wasn't just a hokey tourist attraction. The admission was $34 each. Then we were told that for that price not only could we take a daylight tour with a guide, we could take a different tour during the night-time when the park is all lit up. AND we could have free parking in the caravan park that night. That clinched it for us because we usually pay about $30 per night to get a camp-site anyway. Well, it turned out to be a fabulous place to visit.
In 1934 Jose' Paronella built his dream, a Spanish-style castle alongside the highway south of Cairns. He built it to be not only a tourist attraction but a get-away for local sugar-cane farmers. It's had a fascinating history and was abandoned for many years. The highway was rerouted away from it about forty years ago. Along the way several
cyclones and terrible floods devastated much of the castle and today only remnant walls remain. In 1993 it was bought by it's current owners and restored, as much as possible, to it's former glory.The location in the rainforest is breathtakingly beautiful. There are two waterfalls, one feeding a swimming lagoon. There are walking paths, a tunnel, turret stairs to climb, water fountains and unbelievable rain forest plants and trees. It's like being in a magical forest.
We enjoyed our morning tour so much that we went back in the afternoon and wandered around the 13 acres again. That evening we were fortunate enough to be taken on the night-time tour by the owner, Mark. He's passionate about the property and it's history. We all (30 of us) took flashlights and followed along in the dark as he fed 60 eels in the lake and showed us 'secret' parts of the property not shown on the day-time tour. The castle remnants and lily pond are accentuated with lights now and so lovely. It was magical to be out in the rainforest in the night-time (with 30 other people, I'm not dumb enough to want to do it by myself).
Castle at Night
It was warm and magical in the dark. And that still wasn't enough! We were told that those of us in the caravan park could have free range of the place, could even take our breakfast down to the lake in the morning. We didn't do that (cornflakes in a bowl are hard to carry in a rain forest) but we walked all around the property again before the gates opened to the public. We followed the sounds of terrible, screechy bird sounds and discovered fruit bats by the dozens. They're huge and when they fly they're the size of our west coast seagulls - I'm not kidding. They rest in the daytime in the trees, in the full sunlight, and they fight like crazy, trying to unseat each other. We watched them for a long time which wasn't easy because we didn't want to stand underneath their trees!
We almost hating leaving the park. The story of it's creation and survival is fascinating. You can read more, if you're interested, at http://www.paronellapark.com.au/
I can't resist adding one more sugar-cane photo. We drove through another 100 kms of fields today. I'm sure we'll never see so much sugar cane again in our lifetimes.
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carolyn
non-member comment
I was thinking of you today and that you'd be home soon and realized that I hadn't checked into your travel blog in a while and had some catching up to do. So just found out about Cam. How great is that! Good news. Enjoying reading about all your travels. See you soon!, Love, C