Paronella Park

Today we visited Paronella Park.

José Paronella had a dream. He was a self-made millionaire, a Spanish immigrant who came to Australia in the early 1900s and made his fortune buying and selling sugar cane farms. After travelling the world twice and marrying, he returned to Queensland in the 1930s with a dream of building a castle for his family. He bought a thirteen-acre block of land with its own waterfall for $120 and set to work on his plans. What he ended up building was a romanticised wonderland, which became a haven for courting couples and off-duty servicemen, opened to the public in the late 1930s for all to enjoy. It had a ballroom, movie theatre, tennis courts and picnic areas, all interlaced with rainforest walks, waterways, and a tunnel of love. It would have been spectacular in its time. Unfortunately, despite his millions, Jose was too frugal for his own good. Using sand from his own riverbanks, he cursed his castle with concrete cancer so that it couldn’t withstand the harsh conditions of Far North Queensland. Much like Daph.

It has a colourful history of ownership and usage, but ultimately it perished to fire and cyclones (of course!) and is now just a shell of its former glory. Eco-protected and heritage listed, you could be mistaken into thinking you are wandering the grounds of a sixteenth-century Catalonian high residence, not the 90-year-old tourist park it was. It has a beautiful energy despite its tragic past.

A highlight is a classical concerto at night by The String Family. Once a quartet, they are now a trio, due to the father slipping on the rocks at Josephine Falls and fracturing his skull (see the previous post about the perils of Far North Queensland).

And no tourist attraction visit is complete without the “Know-it-all” family, who continuously interrupted our Romanian tour guide to point out her language faux pas. She was doing a marvellous job of telling the history of the place in what is her second language, made even more romantic by her accent and word choice. I’d like to see YOU, Mrs “I know everything”, conduct a guided tour of a Bolshevik residence in a foreign tongue. Stick your trap door and bird-eating spiders up your arse, and just enjoy.