It’s fair to say you wouldn’t expect to find a Spanish Castle in the rainforest of the north Queensland hinterland of Innisfail. I’m not really sure where Queensland becomes north Queensland, and then when it becomes Far North Queensland. Just thought I should put that out there for future reference.

So, there’s this place called Paronella Park. A Spanish dude called Jose Paronella made his fortune in the cane fields in the 1920s. This gave him the funds to build his dream – a Spanish castle. It’s the most unexpected find on our trip so far. He built a castle with a ball room that hosted parties and dinners for many guests as well as theatre productions. There’s a landing near the waterfall (Mena Waterfall) with space for his guests to watch the spectacular falls. There’s another building that was used for a dining room, two tennis courts, and change rooms. He built walk ways through the forest and drilled out a tunnel that takes you to another small waterfall.

The Refreshment Room at Paronella Park

This place has its own hydro electric generator using the waterfall and was the first in Queensland.

At Mena Waterfall in Paronella Park

 There’s a long, long story about who owned the place over the decades since Jose died in 1948. Suffice to say, it suffered from a fire, a few cyclones and one huge rainforest eating it up. It was rediscovered in about 2004 by a couple who have lovingly restored it and opened it to the public again. With the help of Jose’s daughter, Theresa, who was living in Brisbane, the new owners even found this truly amazing avenue of Kauri trees that Jose planted.

Avenue of Kauri trees

Jose even planted another row a couple of metres into the rainforest because these will one day be so fat that you won’t be able to walk between them. You could knock down the central row, use the timber (make a fortune) and still have an avenue of kauris. Only thing is – that will take about a thousand years. But hey, Jose liked to plan ahead.

These are the most majestic trees. They tower up, perfectly straight, way into the sky. Here’s my favourite photo of them:

Kauri – Supertree

I don’t think the boys realised it at the time, but we did squeeze in an extra historical item without them noticing. They had put  a moratorium on anything of heritage value after the last couple of days steeped in all things old. (I wonder if that includes me). Anyway, we stopped to see the Curtain Fig tree which is thought to be over 500 years old.

The Curtain Fig Tree

It was bigger than you could ever show in a photo, and very, very impressive. It’s called the Curtain Fig because it killed its host tree which then toppled over on an angle and the fig continued to drop its roots down, forming a curtain. We humans get very creative with names, don’t we? On the path back to the car from seeing the giant Fig Tree I saw this pair of (appropriately located) Fig Parrots – a male and female – having a munch on the seeds of a tree.

Fig Parrots

They weren’t the least bit scared of me (and 10 other people) taking their photo.

Atherton Tablelands

Pretty stunning hey? This is the view from a lookout right in the middle of Atherton. They grow heaps of different crops round here. Apart from the obligatory sugarcane and bananas, there’s acres of fruit trees, avocados, corn, tea, coffee and stuff we didn’t even recognise. The cattle have big smiles on their faces with the lush green countryside. Only bad thing for us was the temperature. With this elevation comes the need for a blanket at night. It was quite a shock.

Then you get into the waterfall side of things. There must be a couple of dozen waterfalls to stop and visit as you wind your way south to the coast near Innisfail. After all things historical yesterday, we tried to keep the overload of waterfalls to a minimum, so we just did three. Here’s a pic of Millaa Millaa falls.

MIllaa Millaa Falls

Then we went directly to the best one – Josephine Falls, just at the base of the imposing Mount Bartle Frere (1622m) which is Queensland’s highest peak. Thank goodness John has already climbed this peak a couple of times otherwise I’m sure the boys would have found themselves at the top. I was exhausted just looking at it. Anyway, back to Josephine Falls…..

Josephine Falls

You can swim in the clear blue water here and slide down the slippery (derr) rocks to the pool below. Which of course the boys did – many times.

Rock sliding at Josephine Falls

It wasn’t all waterfalls today though. I finally saw a sugarcane train! I made John stop just for the photo opportunity.

Sugarcane train near Innisfail.

We disembarked in Cairns and headed towards the Atherton Tablelands. It was so much cooler than way up north or even out on the water. John said it seemed weird to be driving so fast after all the slow rough tracks we’ve been on lately.

This area is well-known for its mountain bike riding trails, so the boys found one in Davies Creek National Park on the way to a lovely bush camping site with no one in coo-ee of us.

Upper Davies Creek National Park

We stopped in Mareeba where they are growing coffee these days. We even found time for stopping to actually drink a coffee. I liked that. Mareeba also has an amazing Heritage Museum at the Visitor Information Centre. We couldn’t believe the sheer volume of things to see there. They had extensive displays on the pioneering days, mining of gold, the now defunct tobacco industry and its history, pastoralist history, beef industry and a huge number of historical displays of times gone by. It was exhausting. We only stopped in there to get a map, but left an hour later.

Then in Atherton, we found the trail head for another extensive network of mountain bike trails. There’s a Pump Track (that’s a small set of tracks with numerous mounds and raised tracks for zooming over). It was here that Harry fell off a raised track and ate dirt. How he didn’t lose his front teeth, or break his nose is a mystery. He ahs ended up with just a few grazes and a bit less chin than he used to own.

We also visited Herberton. It’s touted as a town where every building is heritage listed. What it actually is, is a private museum of an enormous collection of historical buildings and an endless collection of stuff from farming tools, children’s toys, clothing, blacksmith’s tools, printing presses, ancients cameras – the list goes on and on and on. The one place that did catch my eye was the old pharmacy.

The old days in Pharmacy

It was an amazing collection “stuff” that one couple had spent 50 years putting together. But we were completely over the whole history thing by now. Ferg and John went for a good hard MTB ride for a couple of hours and Harry (injured after the crash earlier today) pushed the trolley in the supermarket. It was odd, because my supermarket buddy is always Ferg, while Harry usually does fuel, gets ice and cleans the car windows with John. But I’ll take anyone who’ll help me when it’s shopping time.

What a fantastic time we had on our impromptu cruise. We loved coming past Cape Tribulation.

Cape Tribulation

But it was disappointing to see those wretched clouds hanging around. There was a mist in the air, which at least made for an unusual rainbow across the water.

Rainbow near Port Douglas

We travelled with some lovely people from various places – Port Fairy, Bendigo, Mackay, Rockhampton, Sydney and even Cairns. It was time for final photos on deck for everyone.

Cruising.

As we approached Cairns the crew donned the high visibility gear and took their places on deck. We dropped the speed as we got closer and I took the next photo from the stern of the ship showing the shipping channel we were travelling through in our approach to Cairns.

Cairns shipping channel

I never realised Cairns had such a big port, but there are at least five wharves for ships to dock. It’s a different view from the B deck as we arrive in town.

Arriving in Cairns

It does look cloudy, but the sun was out from time to time for a shot of my two biggest boys.

And here’s one of our ship and some local boats in tropical Cairns as we were ready to disembark. What a great few days!

Boats, big and small.