A Castle, a Waterfall & Fireflies

We finally left Cairns this morning, driving South 90 minutes to Mena Creek and Paronella Castle where we are staying for the night.

Many years ago, in 1992 on a holiday in FNQ we discovered this castle off the beaten track. It was built in the 1930s by a Spaniard named Jose Paronella who missed his European heritage. It became a well loved place for locals for ballroom dancing, weddings, picnics by the lake, games of tennis or lawn bowls, movies and more. Unfortunately, some years after all the hard work in building the castle and gardens, floods destroyed a good portion of it. Although it was rebuilt, it ended up in disrepair until the current owners fell in love with it and bought it in 1993. When we first saw this place it was in total disrepair, which added to its charm as we wandered around the ruins, for free and without a guided tour.

Today we each did a guided day tour (separately because of the dog) and then Gadi did a tour of the hydroelectric plant on site. The day tours gave the history of the park and showed how it once looked in its prime. We explored the ruins of the ballroom, cafe, dressing rooms, theatre and gardens with tennis courts and lawn bowls for the genteel folks in the 1940s and 50s.

In between the tours we chilled out (literally) in airconditioned comfort inside the caravan. In the evening we both did the night tours, a totally different experience where you get to walk through the forest with torch in hand and see little yabbies in the creek, millions of fireflies in the high branches of a tall tree and of course the spectacular finale where they light up the castle slowly in all the colours of the rainbow and with soft music playing adding to the fairytale setting of a castle set in a forest next to a waterfall.

All up a lovely day re-exploring and tripping down memory lane. Makes it much easier that they happen to have a small caravan park on site, so we didn’t have far to go when our tours were done.

Now to relax for the evening with our aircon!

Night night xxRead more