Situated not far from Innisfail. This is a Spanish Castle built in Australia! It was Jose Paronella’s dream to build a castle for his fiancé Matilda. He arrived from Spain in 1913 from northern Spain. He worked hard for 11 years buying and selling sugar cane farms. He then found this perfect forest next to Mena Creek for his dream. He went back to Spain to get his fiancé only to discover that after him not writing for 11 years she had married somebody else and had two children! Don’t blame her. He then proposed to her younger sister Margarite and brought her back to Australia. In 1929 he purchased the land and built the castle.

He built a hydro electric plant to power the 13 acre park. It was North Queensland’s first hydro electric plant. The grounds were ready to welcome the public in 1935. Jose was an entrepreneur he had a cinema, swimming baths, ice cream parlour,  a lovers walk, two tennis courts all to attract visitors so that he could charge them for the pleasure of visiting.

However they were not a very lucky family. In 1946 flood, loads of logs got swept down river and destroyed some of the buildings. It took Jose 6 months to repair all the gardens and reopen. He then died in 1948. Margarite died in 1967. Their son Joe died at 39 of a heart attack. In 1979 a fire swept through the main building.1986 cyclone Winifred hit Paronella Park. Not much luck!

The now owners are refurbishing the park bit by bit. It is really lovely but you can see how much work there is to do but it would be wonderful to restore it to its former glory.

Apparently the gardens were used for the movie ‘Sniper’ staring Tom Berenger, it was meant to be the Panama Jungle but it was Innisfail!