Of all the places on our wish list to visit in Tropical North Queensland, Paronella Park was in our top 5. Seeing pictures over many years had our expectations elevated high so we were hopeful we wouldn’t be disappointed if our expectations were not met. We ended up with one main regret with our stay at Paronella Park. You will need to keep reading to find out what our regret was.
Paronella Park wowed us. The photos look like they are from ancient ruins that may have existed in some Spanish or South American rainforest somewhere. It is almost true. Paronella Park is the ruins of José Paronella’s dream. It is no surprise it was announced as one of the Q150 icons of Queensland.
History of Paronella Park
The park’s history began over 100 years ago in 1914, when José Paronella first saw the scrub along Mena Creek, having arrived from Catalonia in Spain the year before. He married in Spain in 1925, returning to Australia for their honeymoon, eventually purchasing the land in 1929.
The house they first built to live in still stands. José then commenced to build the structures, including a theatre, tea gardens, refreshment rooms, and more. Aside from the initial house, everything was made with concrete, reinforced with old railway track. They installed a Hydro Electric generation plant, providing rare electric power in North Queensland.
Open to the public, Paronella Park became renowned for travellers and locals alike. Mena Creek was the main road north so Paronella Park was a popular stop on the way through. Electric power meant they could store cold refreshments, including ice-cream. It was a civilised stop that no other place could match in the tropical north of Queensland.
For locals, the theatre showed movies on Saturday nights and was a venue for dances and parties. The tea garden and swimming pool were also popular, in addition to two tennis courts and children’s playground.
There were several disasters causing various parts of Paronella Park to be damaged or destroyed. A fire in the theatre, several floods, and in more recent years, cyclones. Eventually, the reinforcement in the concrete was the undoing of some structures as it rusted, and the resulting swelling caused the concrete to split.
Thankfully, new owners, Mark and Judy Evans, took on the monumental task of maintaining and preserving Paronella Park. They decided not to rebuild to restore it to its glory days, so the remaining parts of Paronella Park now look they have been reclaimed by the rainforest, with the beautiful scenery provided by the ruins look that results from it.
Features of Paronella Park
There are so many features at Paronella Park that it takes hours to go around and admire them all. When you purchase your tickets, you are given a map so you can discover and find everything. Below are some of the features, with many more to explore and discover.
Grand Staircase
The grand staircase was the first structure built, aside from the house initially built. The stairs provided a vital function for building the structures at the top garden. The sand and gravel used to mix the concrete were sourced from near Mena Creek at the bottom of the stairs. The stairs made it easier to carry the sand and gravel up to the top garden.
There are four flights of stairs in a straight line with short landing areas, possibly to allow rests on the way up. The stairs are steep with the first flight having a gentler slope.
There are markers on the stairs showing the level of floods experienced at Paronella Park. The first two are on the second flight of stairs, representing four different years. 1967, 1994, 1996, and 2018.
The marker on the third flight of stairs is from the major floods of 1946, which caused a lot of damage to the park, including damaging the Hydro Electric generator.
Concrete Planters
Jose Paronella made 500 concrete planters, each individually moulded. The are on the grand staircase at each landing and the base of the stairs. Throughout Paronella Park, there are hundreds as a distinct and common feature in almost all of the structures.
Lower Refreshment Rooms
There are several features that I would say represent Paronella Park well. The Lower Refreshment Rooms is the most iconic feature, it is the image I had to use as the feature image. The difference is the feature image is at night, lit up during the night tour. Paronella Park themselves use the Lower Refreshment Rooms as the first image on the Paronella Park website 
.
The refreshment rooms operated as a cafe, located between the tennis courts and the tea gardens and swimming pool. The photo is viewing it from the tennis court side, behind the concrete fence. Between the fence and the refreshment rooms is the Lower Fountain. As is the case with most of the features, the fence and the fountain prominently use the concrete planters.
Off to the side of the refreshment rooms are the changing cubicles, where guests could change from their formal clothes into bathers. The tennis courts were originally made from crushed termite mounds but were replaced with asphalt after they proved to be difficult to maintain through numerous floods on the lower ground.
Lower Fountain
What was to be the final project of Jose Paronella, the Lower Fountain was left incomplete when he passed away. His son Joe built the fountain according to Jose’s plans. The fountain water is gravity fed from the top of Mena Creek Falls, requiring no power to run it. The fountain was rejuvenated by the Evans family in 1993.
Teresa Falls
It is like a miniature version of Mena Creek Falls. Teresa Falls is 50 metres downstream from a spring, modified by Jose to mimic the three streams of Mena Creek Falls. The name of the falls is after Jose’s daughter.
Picnic Area
The picnic area is beside Mena Creek surrounded with backdrops of the falls, swimming area, and rainforest. The picnic area, located at the bottom of the grand staircase, is made up of several concrete tables and chairs, and concrete fencing.
During the wet season, the picnic area is frequently under water. Visiting during May, it is out of the normal wet season but with a few days of rain the Mena Creek Falls was flowing well and the water is lapping through the edges of the picnic area. To the right of the falls, the hydro power structure almost hangs from the side of the cliff.
The concrete picnic tables are subjected to the constant moisture, moss growing on all of them. The meld well into the lush rainforest the picnic area sits beside.
Castle Ballroom
The Ballroom was the entertainment centre for Saturday nights in the 1930s. The castle was one of the main features of Paronella Park, a regular social gathering place. The hall used for dances, parties, weddings, and used as a theatre for showing movies. The ballroom included a mirror ball made of 1270 diamond cut mirrors – a decadent addition, costing £49. To put the price in context, the land cost £120.
A fire in the 1970s destroyed most of the castle and ballroom, including the polished wooden floors, the gold trimmed curtains, and everything else within. Only some of the walls and the castle turret remains as a reminder of the grandness of the castle. A replacement mirror ball symbolically sits within the ballroom area, used during the night tour.
Hydro Electric Power
An impressive feature of Paronella Park is how much the natural power source of Mena Creek and the waterfall was utilised. Queensland’s first hydro power was built at Paronella Park in 1933. Special buildings were constructed around the turbine and generator. The hydro power produced electricity for the park when supplied electricity was not available in northern Queensland.
The hydro electric generator provided power for over 45 years, until 1979. After the fires that destroyed the castle, the usage and maintenance of the hydroelectric system was also abandoned. With readily available power from the power grid, the need to rebuild the hydro system wasn’t feasible.
In 2008, restoration of the hydro system commenced, transporting the turbine to Germany to be rebuilt. In 2010, using the original turbine, hydro power once again produced all of Paronella Park’s power needs, with excess power fed into the electricity grid.
Wompoo
This is not a feature of the park but something that was a treat for me. During the day tour, our guide stopped us to look around to see any wildlife. Looking on the ground, surrounding area, and even in the trees, I didn’t spot what we had stopped for. Considering where we were, a cassowary somewhere through the bushes wouldn’t have been out of place. It ended being a Wompoo fruit dove 
nesting. There had been time I had looked for them when hearing them on a walking trail called Wompoo Circuit 
, but hadn’t seen one before. Had it not been pointed out I probably would have walked right passed this one too.
The Paronella Park Regret
So, what was our regret at Paronella Park? We didn’t plan for more time there – twenty hours was not enough. Our expectations were high and they were met and exceeded. What would we have done differently? There were three ways we could have extended our time.
- Arrived earlier in the day – had we arrived before midday, we could have seen more and still left mid-afternoon the following day
- Extended our stay for another night – this would have given us another night-time experience and more daytime in the afternoon and following morning
- Second visit on the return trip – this wasn’t an option for us because our itinerary was one-way through this area
If you travel through the area twice, stopping in both directions would have addressed our desire for more time. Speaking to others, this is a common choice with a lot of people. Be aware that Paronella Park can be very popular so you need to availability of accommodation. My parents couldn’t stay because there was no room left in the parking area, let alone room left in the proper caravan sites.
Extra time at the park is not a problem because the tickets last for 24 months. Yep, they last for 2 years! Only your accommodation is needed, assuming you stay at Paronella Park, so you can be relaxed about how the time spent there is planned.
