South of Port Douglas and Cairns

Sorry, no photos of Prt Douglas and Cairns because everyone's seen it all before. We had lovely but brief peons of sunshine while inPort Douglas and enjoyed walking around the streets and the water. It was raining as we passed through Cairns, so we decided to keep going after a very brief swim at the man-made lagoon.

The countryside south of Cairns is green and lush, and full of sugar cane. Moving through the extremely wet areas of Tully, Innisfail and Babinda we stopped only occasionally. A real highlight was stumbling upon the Babinda Boulders where the river has car edits way through the mountains to create some beautiful rock formations (best just to seen photos below).

We were all looking forward to arriving at Paronella Park, located about 30km inland from Innisfail. Created by Jose Paronella (a Spanish immigrant) in the 1930s, this is an amazing property. In its heyday it was a type of county club with a castle, tennis courts, cafe, ballroom and cinema set in rainforest along a beautiful river. It is gradually being worn away by cyclones but is still really worth a visit. We enjoyed walking around the enormous grounds, but the kids particularly liked feeding the turtles, fish and eels. The girls could resist letting the eels slither all over their feet as they fed them. As we were able to camp at the park, we also did a night tour where we spotted glow worms and luminous fungus and heard more stories about Jose and his family. The highlight was seeing the amazing castle lit up out of the darkness.
Hoots below are-
1-4: Babinda Boulders
5: Paronella Park (castle)
6: Tilly's feet with the slithering eels
7: by the creek at Paronella Park
8: QLD Karri Pines along Lovers Lane at PP
9: Jose's castle at night