Apparently these birds really are critically endangered but we keep seeing them willy nilly! Lucky us! We then took the casual drive through the beautiful countryside to Paronella Park.
Paronella Park is 12 acres of rainforest where in 1929, a Spaniard named Jose Paronella (there is a link there somewhere) built a castle. Why you ask? Well we're pretty sure there was no real threat from the Romans, British or French in Australia in 1929 so there must have been another reason. As it turns out, he just wanted to. He always had a vision to build a castle and after working the cane fields in North Queensland and ultimately buying and selling numerous cane farms to earn his fortune, he could afford it. So, when he returned to Spain to collect his pre-arranged fiancé, only to find that she had married another dude, he returned to Australia with her sister! Why not? He set to work on building his castle and only five years later, whammo, Robert is your cousins dad. There it is.
But this is no ordinary castle. Paronella Park is built on the shores of the Mena Creek adjacent to Mena Falls, which is a beautiful, permanent waterfall with shedloads of water flowing (perfect for a hydro-electric power station).
So, Jose the pastry chef, being the industrious little devil he was, built a hydro-electric power station. This was to power the castle, which includes a Grand Ballroom/picture theatre and numerous other outbuildings, as well as a cottage for he and his wife to live in. He never actually lived in the castle! Go figure. Anyway, the park was created for members of the public to enjoy.
They held weddings, social events, movies and conferences in the main castle and used the pavilion area and beautiful gardens for games of tennis, badminton and bocce. The pavilion was also used as changerooms for the swimming hole at the bottom of the falls where there was a diving platform and a beautiful area for picnics and sun-baking. On the opposite side of the falls there is even a grotto!
All the structures that Jose built area in classic Spanish architecture and in their heyday would have been sensational to see.
Unfortunately, disaster struck the park a few times and has led to the deterioration of many of the buildings. In 1946 a flood wiped out the lower level buildings and Jose rebuilt them. Cyclones Larry and Yasi both had their way with the place and there was another flood in 1972. In 1979, however, there was a fire that started in the castle's kitchen that destroyed the vast majority of the buildings, including the grand ballroom. Such a shame.
Anyway, there has been a fair bit of restoration work done and the current owners (Jose died in 1948) have developed the Park into a terrific tourist attraction, complete with a small but very well equipped caravan park.
There are plenty of fish in the river along with a few eels and turtles, all competing for food. The boys loved getting them to jump over each other to fight for the pellets.
Jose developed a second, smaller waterfall which he named Theresa Falls, after his daughter. Guess what her name was....
He dug a trench straight through a hill to use the soil for concrete and then filled it back in to form a tunnel, "The Tunnel of Love", which he would charge punters a small fee to access the tunnel to get to Theresa Falls. Quite an entrepreneur was young Jose.
We did a night tour through the park which was great fun too. It was quite scary for the boys, particularly when all the torches were turned off. There is very little moon-light that gets through the rainforest canopy.
Jack topped the tour off with a purchase of a Paronella Park gold souvenir coin. If I know Spaniards as I think I do, the gold will probably dissolve overnight and by morning the coin will be rusty.
This is were I said for you to get married when you were talking about eloping to a castle. I love paronella park.
ReplyDeleteXx Elesha