Paronella Park

12^th July Continued – Paronella Park is an old castle and park built by a Spanish man back in the 1930’s.  He had made his money in the cane fields and wanted to build his dream which was this castle.

 

He loved a waterfall on Mena Creek and so he built his concrete castle there.  It was once very grand with a ballroom and turrets and a long staircase down to some picnic grounds near the waterfall.  He had tennis courts and walking paths.  He planted lots of plants to make the place beautiful.

The waterfall at Mena Creek

 

The other thing he did that was pretty special, was to build a hydro-electric facility so that he used the water falling from the waterfall to make electricity to power his park.  In those days no-one in the area had any kind of electricity let alone hydro-electricity so he was a bit ahead of everyone else.

The hydro-electricity facility was renewed a few years ago so the park is still gets all its power from there.

Feeding the greedy eels

 

A fire burnt a lot of the castle down in the 1970’s and then some more of it was knocked down by Cyclone Larry so now it is a ruin being overgrown in parts by moss and other ferns.  It looks beautiful anyway and you can still imagine people there having fancy holidays.  Bella thinks it looks like the kind of place that fairies would like to live.

We had an afternoon tour and another tour at night.  They lit up the lower tea rooms and the water feature and played harp music while we watched.  We also fed the fish and the huge eels that live in the pool at the bottom of the waterfall.  A 1.8m crocodile has moved into the pool recently but we did not see it.

Paronella Park by night