We left Babinda after a good night's sleep and drove 30kms into Innisfail. Along the way were beautiful mountains and rainforest. We stopped in Innisfail at Autopro to pick up a new breaker bar to replace our broken one. We didn't look around Innisfail much but continued only 10kms to a place called Paronella Park at Mena Creek. Included in our entry to the park was a night in their camping area. We checked in and found it was a really tight little spot and required Rick to revers uphill into it. Fortunately Rick didn't have any trouble, however a less experienced person would have had great difficulty.
Paronella Park is unique and far too difficult to describe except to say
that José Paronella’s dream was to build a castle. He chose a
special part
of Australia and created Paronella Park. On 5 Hectares beside Mena
Creek Falls he built his castle, picnic area by the falls, tennis
courts, bridges, a tunnel, and wrapped it up in an amazing range of
7,500 tropical plants and trees (now a lush rainforest!). It opened to
the public in 1935. To explain it further I recommend you have a look
at
www.paronellapark.com.au.
After lunch we went on the short guided tour through the park and then returned at 6:15pm for the night tour which gave a different view of the park. After the night tour we walked about 200m up the road to the Mena Creek Hotel for dinner.
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| The castle |
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| The waterfall by night |
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| Feeding the fish |
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| Huge avenue of Kauri trees |
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| The swaying suspension bridge over the falls |
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| The view from the suspension bridge |
What a lovely place it is too. Glad you finally liked some-place we recommended.
ReplyDeleteCheers Neil