Paronella Park QLD

Everyone has a dream… today was not mine 🙃

We set off from Townsville under blue skies and sunshine, stopping at the Frosty Mango for a delicious mango soft serve (highly recommend). However, by the time we reached Tully it was living up to its reputation as one of Australia’s wettest towns. Then we arrived at Paronella Park…

After a check-in process that took way longer than necessary, I think the old lady at reception sensed my fear and deliberately assigned us the muddiest site in the entire campground – aka the paddock behind the Mena Creek Hotel. It’s so boggy we’ve had to leave the car attached to the caravan just so the jockey wheel doesn’t disappear into ankle-deep mud. Needless to say, I’m not impressed.

Once I’d embraced the situation, we joined a guided tour of Paronella Park. The park itself is fascinating. A beautiful rainforest setting wrapped around the extraordinary dreams of José Paronella, who transformed a patch of tropical Queensland into a whimsical collection of castles, bridges and gardens. Time, floods and cyclones have all left their mark, creating a wonderfully atmospheric, almost lost-world feel.

After an average dinner at the Mena Creek Hotel, we returned to the Park for the evening experience, which consisted of a light display set to a handful of musical pieces. It was pretty enough, but didn’t quite live up to the hype.

Paronella Park is absolutely worth visiting for its quirky history and rainforest beauty, but if I’m being honest, the daytime tour was the highlight and we probably (definitely) wouldn’t recommend staying overnight.

On the plus side, the publican who clearly had no idea (or teeth), mistakenly served us an expensive bottle of Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon without charging us. Joke’s on her 😁🍷Read more