José Paronella's story is an interesting one. He sailed to Australia in 1913 from Catalonia in Northern Spain and set himself up in Innisfail. Originally a pastry chef in his homeland, he made his wealth in Queensland through buying, improving and selling sugar cane farms. Travelling through the beautiful countryside, he came across a 'virgin forest' alongside a spectacular waterfall and decided this was the perfect location for his dream.
In the rural locality of Mena Creek in tropical Far North Queensland, his creation came to fruition through days and nights of hard work over several years. He was never a builder, nor an architect or engineer but a man able to learn from taking in the visual aspects of something he saw. The design of the castle came from his childhood memories of Catalan castles, of which there are some 600 in the Catalonia region. With Barcelona not far away, he was also inspired by famous architect Gaudi (responsible for the Sagrada Familia church).
Completed in 1935, José (together with his wife Margarita) welcomed guests to Paronella Park to enjoy the castle's movie theatre, which was transformed on weekends into a huge ballroom with live bands for entertainment and a massive ball of mirrors hanging from the ceiling, reflecting out a dazzle of coloured lights.
Surrounded by plantings of more than 7,000 tropical plants and trees (now a lush rainforest), the castle was not all that José created here. He built North Queensland's first river-driven hydro electric plant to power the 13-acres of the park, as well as bridges, tennis courts from crushed termite mounds and Teresa Falls (a waterfall named after his daughter). The latter was his most notable work. It saw him cutting a tunnel (that has an ornamental entrance) through a hill to save people the trouble of climbing around it to reach the miniature waterfall. Remember, he had no experience in doing any of these things. It's quite amazing and just shows you where there's a will, there's a way. Unfortunately, these days you can't venture to this waterfall as the ground is too unstable.
The estate is divided into upper and lower levels that are linked by a 47-step staircase on one side of the castle and a service road on the other side. The upper level today features the ruins of the main castle and ballroom (caused by a fire), a wishing well, a cottage museum featuring a variety of interesting keepsakes, a cafe and gift shop. On the lower level, you have the pavilion with turret-topped balconies containing refreshment rooms and cubicles for swimmers, a large fountain and a number of avenues that lead you down paths of beauty, including Lovers Lane and the Tunnel of Love, Palm Grove, the Bamboo Forest and Kauri Avenue with its tower of Kauri trees that look like cathedral spires in a sacred forest.
There's a lot of beauty in the gardens and the structures to be seen today despite destruction from fire, a mass of logs from an upstream clearing descending on the park, multiple floods and a couple of powerful cyclones (Larry and Yasi) ravishing the area in past years. Both José and the current owners Mark and Judy Evans (José passed away in 1948) have restored parts of the park over the course of time to allow this 'almost lost world' to stay open.
Wanting to buy the new DJI Air 2S? Click on this link and support the channel: [ Ссылка ]
Get the LUT file I use with the @DJI AIr 2S here [ Ссылка ]
Dont forget to subscribe to the Drone Kings in Darwin just by clicking on this link. [ Ссылка ]
Digital graphics thanks to the power of mTracker 3D from @mot
This family friendly video was filmed with the GoPro Hero 8 Black at Darwin in the Northern Territory.
Don't be an armchair traveller - Looking for a holiday destination? Come and visit the top end of Australia. The northern territory has so much amazing locations to visit.
#DarwinAustralia #familyfriendly #familyfriendlyvideo #family #friendly
EQUIPMENT:
GoPro Hero 8 Black
Dont forget to click on the cards that pop up in the top right corner during the video - let me know what you think of the channel.
Don't forget to subscribe to Drone Kings in Darwin - we have a lot more videos coming this year.
Want to publicise your drone videos - come and check out [ Ссылка ] - its free to join Reddit and post your videos
Use this link to get $5 FREE Kogan credit - [ Ссылка ]
Want to get into uploading videos and get them noticed (just like this one). Then get TubeBuddy - helps with tags, thumbnails and other stuff. There is a free version but you get more features with the paid. Click on this link to get TubeBuddy. [ Ссылка ]
