We said farewell to our tropical hideaway and stuffed one final homemade icecream into our gobs, before accompanying Dave, Liz, Ada and Henry for a picnic, walk and swim at the beautiful Mossman Gorge. Interesting to see that the Gorge area is managed by its traditional owners - apparently no partnership with local government and all staff were local people. Very slick operation - and a lovely place to spend the hours before our dear friends scooted off to Cairns to catch their (delayed!) plane back to Melbs.
We consoled ourselves with sushi train in Cairns where we stayed just one night before heading to Mission Beach where Bill was keen to try for some squid. We decided to detour slightly to check out a much touted tourist attraction called Paronella Park. We had seen some very glossy and intriguing brochures about Paronella Park but couldn't work out what it actually was or what we would be able to do and see there. The brochure just kept stating that 'the dream continues...' in romantic script. If this was a clever bit of marketing it worked!
Anyway, turns out Paronella Park is a big property and castle built by a Spanish dude called Jose. He arrived in Aus, made plenty of money and decided to build a castle - as you do... He opened 'his dream' to the public in the 1930s and had movies, dances, swimming and a cafe for people to enjoy. After the Paronella family left half the castle was burnt down and the rest left to rack and ruin. Then the current owners bought it for a song and have spent a lot of time and energy rebuilding and opening it up as a tourist attraction. They trade on the 'Big Dream' aspect - you know, follow your dreams blah blah. Other tourists rave on about this magic place but unfortunately we got a guide who was more interested in getting the tour finished than answering questions or lingering anywhere. We were literally jogging after him as he gave us the briefest explanations over his shoulder. So after the tour we still didn't really get what the place was, so we wandered around for a while trying to work it out, then gave up and left. But I imagine with the right guide it would be easy to be caught up in the strange, eerie magic of this unusual place... As we left, the kids were given a little yellow bag with 'the dream continues' printed on the front and a piece of rock (from the castle) inside... Righto...
We drove onto Mission Beach which didn't blow us away, and at which Bill had no fishing success. So we spoke long and hard with the friendly and very helpful guy at the Visitors Info Centre and planned our attack of Queensland's tropical islands and beaches... Only problem was that as we drove South our wonderful and reliable (NOT) car started being weird again before conveniently conking out on the small but very busy bridge into Tully (the most humid town in Australia). Luckily the locals were all friendly and helpful and soon had us off the bridge and towed to the local RACQ mechanic before we could blink. We were informed that the car needed all sorts of vital work and that we would be in Tully for at least 5-6 days, so we settled uncomfortably into a local caravan park that was packed to the rafters with young people who live for a season in Tully and make a pittance picking bananas in the sweltering heat all day and then make a lot of noise and a big mess in the camp kitchen at night. Fun! As we sat sweating outside our trailer we made an easy decision to get outta there ASAP while the car was being fixed. And so the next day we headed off to beautiful Magnetic Island for 3 nights in a basic self-contained unit at the beach - where we swam in the pool and the ocean, hired a car to explore the island, went on a bushwalk to see WW2 ruins and koalas and rode inflatable tubes behind speed boats - for kicks! It was a wonderful, relaxing couple of days.
