Paronella Park was created by José Paronella In the 1930s. He grew up in Catalonia, Spain, and dreamed of building his own castle. He sailed to Australia in 1913, spent 11 years there making money, returned to Catalonia and married the sister of his previous fianceé who had got tired of waiting for him to return, went back to Australia with her, and in 1929 they bought 13 acres of land next to a waterfall in northern Queensland. There they built his castle.
Well, it's not a real castle, but a building with some castle-like features such as turrets and decorative balconies, and there's a main one and a few smaller ones. What Paronella created was a pleasure park for the public, and North Queensland's first hydroelectric plant to power it. Despite being in the middle of nowhere, it was a very popular place. There was a theatre/ballroom, which showed movies every Saturday night and had Australia's first mirror ball; a little museum; tea rooms; extensive gardens with meandering pathways and thousands of plants, including an venue of Kauri pines; tennis courts; a picnic area next to the swimming pool (that is, the lake at the bottom of the waterfall); and the family's humble cottage.
Due to the ravages of time, fire, flood and cyclone, it stands mostly in ruins now, and has a certain charm to it, but it would be great to see it as it was then. The steep Grand Staircase, originally built to haul sand and gravel up from the waterside to the 'castle' to help make concrete, now has plaques on certain steps to mark the flood levels of certain years. The highest one was for the wet season of 1946, near the top of the 47 steps, an insane height. That flood destroyed some of the park, but they rebuilt and reopened six months later.
Paronella died in 1948, and his wife took over the running of the park. She died 19 years later, and their son took over, but he died just five years later, leaving his wife Val and their two children. Val sold the park in 1977, and it changed hands a few times until an Australian couple travelling the country with their two children in search of a new project discovered, fell in love with, and bought it. They made it what it is today, their attempt at continuing Paronella's dream, but with a focus on preservation rather than restoration. It is a very cool place, there's nowhere else like it, it's well worth a visit if you're ever in North Queensland.
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