It was a very quiet day today.
If short drives were an Olympic sport, we would be on the podium today.
Fishery Falls to Paronella Park is only about 65km. That’s about 50 minutes driving time. I could do it in 45 minutes if Percy wasn’t on the back.
The latest we could check out of Fishery Falls was 10.00am, and the earliest we could check into Paronella Park was 12.00noon. If you are struggling with the maths, that’s 2 hours to do a 50 minute drive.
MBW did a load of washing because it is washing day. Fortunately we are back onto the regular Thursday washing day cycle, and I no longer have to guess when it is happening.
When we get home, I guess that we will be back onto a standard Friday washing day, but who knows …? Maybe Thursday will become our new thing?
There is a little creek down the back of the Fishery Falls Caravan Park. People have said that they have been swimming in it and that they didn’t get eaten by a crocodile, but we haven’t even seen it yet … so we went down this morning for a look.
A very pretty creek, in a very pretty and well-maintained park. We rolled out of the park as close to 10.00am check-out time as we could.
Innisfail was only a small deviation for us, so rather than do the entire drive at about 35km/h, we asked Jolene to take us to Innisfail to have a look-see and to kill some time.
We found two of our favourite things in Innisfail – an Op Shop and coffee – and they were across the road from each other. It wasn’t a coffee shop per se, but rather a McDonald’s McCafe. MBW had enough McPoints for a free McCoffee, and I bought a chocolate chocolate chip muffin and flashed my Senior’s card, and was rewarded with a free coffee of my own.
It helps that I look old and grey, but having a young and beautiful MBW by my side makes “looking old” more of a challenge.
We consumed our coffee and 50% each of a CCC muffin, and explored the Op Shop unsuccessfully – or successfully if you consider that we didn’t spend any money – and by then we couldn’t delay our trip to Paronella Park any longer.
We drove through very picturesque cane fields and arrived at ”The Paddock” about 7 minutes before check-in time, which wasn’t a problem anyway.
We’ve heard that the paddock sites are big and comfortable, and they are.
Great amenities block, too.
So we had a bit of a lazy afternoon. Our ticket into Paronella Park gives us free entry for 2 years, and access to guided tours during the day and also at night.
We hadn’t actually checked in to the caravan park (we paid online in advance of our arrival), so we had a bite of lunch and wandered over the road to check-in and book for the evening tour tonight.
We had a quick unassisted and unguided wander around the park, then headed back to Percy in the paddock for a quiet afternoon.
We’d bought some beef ribs on special the other day, so MBW got them prepared for a slow cook all afternoon, and we just lazed around and read our books. MBW played catch-up on Masterchef.
It’s nice to have decent internet for a change.
Paronella Park is a 1930s Spanish castle build by a guy named Jose Paronella. A guy who clearly had too much money and too much spare time. But a great idea!
The castle would have been magnificent in its day, but “concrete cancer”, big wet seasons, tropical cyclones, and fires have all taken their toll and the place fell into disrepair. It was purchased by a family 30 years ago who have had it heritage listed and are doing restoration works.
We headed over to the park just before 7.00pm for our 7.15pm night tour and got to see the castle and waterfall by lights.
And it was pretty spectacular.
And that’s about it for today. Shower, coffee, reading, and off to the Land of Nod.
Tomorrow we do the day/history tour of Paronella Park and we will go exploring the park better equipped with the knowledge of what we should see.
We probably could have stayed here for just the one night, but it is what it is. We will get some rest before we unleash the horses and tackle the 1,600km or so back home.
Ciao
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