Atherton Table Lands

Today we visited many places in the Atherton Table Lands, like Crater Lakes National Park , coffee, banana, sugar cane, pawpaw (papaya), peanut, mango and macadamia nut plantations and Paronella park. Lake Barrine was formed by a volcanic eruption and then filled with water. It had pretty gardens around it. There is a tea house right next to the lake where you can have crumpets and tea. The coffee plantation was where 80% of Australia's coffee is grown. It smelled really good. Some of the fun things I saw there was a big fish pond in the bathroom. We had scones, with jam and cream. The building was built on stilts and looked out on a Wallaby farm and the coffee plantation. You could see a long way. We saw banana fields getting ready for harvest. They put blue bags over the fruit so animals don't get in. Australians grow big fields of sugar cane, fruit and nuts.
Paronella Park was a castle built by a Spaniard who made his money by taking abandoned sugar cane farms and building them into successful plantations. He made a deal with men who lost their jobs during The Great Depression. He would give them food and a place to stay if they worked on building the castle. It had several fountains, a waterfall, botanical walks, tennis courts made from crushed up ant hills. (In Australian ant hills get 4-5 feet high), a tunnel of love which he tried make a lighted, walk through aquarium. However his concrete wasn't very good so it leaked and got his lighting wet. When we were exploring one of his tunnels we saw a colony of tiny Microbats that are only one inch big. I especially liked Kauri Avenue with tall Kauri trees in a long line. He told his love that he would come back to Spain to get her when he had become rich. It took him so long that his love had married another man by the time he got there, so he married the little sister. During WWII he opened to the American soldiers for Rest and Recuperation. He had Jazz bands come play at fancy Balls for the soldiers. Now it is almost in ruins from cyclone Larry, but you can still see what he had dreamed about.