The couple conserving a Spanish castle in Far North Queensland

Mark and Judy Evans are adventurous people. In 1993, when they chose to settle down in Cairns, they’d already lived overseas with their three kids and travelled around Australia in a caravan.

They weren’t wanting to buy your average suburban dream, telling their agent “we’re looking for something interesting”. The agent met the brief with a five-hectare property at Mena Creek that needed new owners.

“He described a place down near Innisfail – it’s got a castle, a waterfall and a caravan park,” Mark Evans says. “And I can recall saying to him, ‘now that sounds interesting’.”

Built by Spanish immigrant Jose Paronella between 1929 and 1935, the property – known as Paronella Park – was the expression of a dream that the pastry chef from Barcelona brought with him to Australia.

He wanted to build a castle and pleasure garden that would bring people together, like the places he’d seen at home.

On first inspection, the couple wandered “open-mouthed” through gardens of more than 7000 trees, and past castle-like structures Paronella had built out of concrete reinforced with old railway track.

There was also a stone cottage the Paronella family had lived in, an impressive grand staircase, decorative fountains, and a waterfall-generated hydroelectric system that was no longer working.

In the park’s heyday, paying guests had been entertained in a grand ballroom and cinema inside the largest of the buildings, the Top Castle.

Cafes and an ice cream parlour fed the visitors, while music wafted from the upper level of a turreted building – the Lower Refreshment Rooms – where musicians played on the balcony.

By the time the couple inspected the property, decay had set in and much of the architecture was literally crumbling. “It was a fairly forgotten place and rundown, and needed some care and attention,” Evans says.

There was damage from a flood, fire and cyclone, but he and Judy were entranced by the site’s mystery and “decided there, before we even walked out of the property, that we wanted to buy it”.

In the early days as new owners, the couple prioritised enhancing safety, ensuring that the park’s buildings were  structurally sound for future visitors.

Stabilisation works were carried out, and paths were cleared and resurfaced. The hydroelectric system created by Paronella was reinstated so it could power the whole park.

While the couple worked hard to preserve the vision of Jose Paronella, someone they’d never met, a surprise visit from Paronella’s daughter, Teresa Zerlotti, helped shed some light on the man himself.

Zerlotti, by then 70, walked around the park and told stories of her dad: that he chose Mena Creek as the site for the park because he fell in love with the waterfall; how they planted the avenue of towering Queensland kauri trees together.

“She was the one who saw it back then, she felt it, and you could feel the passion as she took us around,” Evans says.

Zerlotti described her father coming in after midnight sometimes, such was his dedication to the park. Stories like this reinforced Evans’ impressions of Paronella.

“To me, that’s the type of person we’re talking about here – with that huge drive, passion, and a dream that he was going to achieve. Nothing was going to get in his way.”

In the 27 years since the couple bought the park, they’ve had ample opportunity to display their own dedication to the place. Cyclone Larry hit in 2006, followed by Cyclone Yasi a few years later.

Larry’s visit was devastating – walls came down, and the park’s garden was severely affected. “There were no leaves on any tree,” Evans says. “There were probably 100 trees down.”

The aftermath of the cyclone was “pretty tough” but also it was incredible to see that not only nature regained its strength but – with community help – so did the deflated couple. “The support we got, the people that turned up, was just amazing.”

So is the resilience of its owners. Evans likes to tell people, “Don’t listen to the dream-takers”, admitting he and Judy were called crazy for buying the place. Even now they get told they were only expected to last a year and a half at the most.

He reckons Jose Paronella would’ve faced the same thing.

“My guess would be 99 per cent of the people who saw what he was doing beforehand thought that he was just a crazy Spaniard.”