Thursday 11th January – To Bundaberg

We left Noosa, heading straight to Bundaberg but via the scenic route. As soon as we got to the town we made a bee-line for the Bundaberg Rum Factory and got a spot on the 3pm tour.  We may not be the biggest fans of rum in the world but Bundaberg (or, Bundy rum as it’s affectionately known here) is a massive success story in Australia, despite having really struggled to make a break-through on the international booze market.  

That's a big bottle....

The factory

First, we needed to know a little about rum history, which brought up that fella James Cook again, as apparently the Endeavour set off from British shores with 1600 gallons of the stuff.  And not much money, so that when the first colonies were being established the transfer of rum more or less controlled the economy.  There was essentially a corrupt military dictatorship. England sent Captain William Bligh over to sort things out.  Within a year he had banned the rum trade and made himself very unpopular leading to the rum rebellion, where armed forces captured Bligh and put him jail for a year before Britain agreed to send another governor to take his place.  They said it was kind of like Australia’s version of the French revolution?! But with rum…. 

The rum industry found its home here in Bundaberg because of the sugar cane industry.  Beginning in 1862, the Queensland tropical conditions were discovered to be ideal for the sugar cane industry.  By 1884 Bundaberg was producing 20% of all Australia’s sugar. But this produced a mountain of left over molasses, so much so it was even flowing into the river.  What to do with all this unused raw material?  Why, make rum, of course! We got to see their storage tanks full of this seasons boiling hot molasses, 10 million litres of the stuff, and even taste a sample – tasted like liquorice, yuck!  We weren’t able to take any cameras, phones or in fact anything with a battery on the tour, such is the flammability of the air at the distillery and their fear of a repeat of a massive fire when the entire stock and all of their buildings were lost.  

 

They use a very specific strain of yeast and have taken extreme measures to secure a batch of this strain, should the entire stock in Bundaberg be lost – they have reserve samples safely stowed away by the National Association of Yeast Cultures in….. Norwich, England! Ah-Haaaaa!

Just some of the range of bottles Bundaberg Rum have produced over the years...

Having heard about the distilling process and the variety of products they sell, we went to the bar for the tasting.  They were very generous.  We each got two free drinks with mixer for our entry fee. I sampled a very nice white rum and very much enjoyed their salted caramel liqueur as my second tipple. We went slowly with our drinks, not leaving enough time to see the whole museum but luckily we can come back in tomorrow to right that wrong!

We found a nice cheap campsite by the river as we desperately needed to get some laundry done. We were treated to a beautiful sunset and a fantastic evening migration of fruit bats along the river.

Each of those tiny black dots is a bat....

One of the sunset....

 

I love watching these majestic creatures and hopefully you will get an idea of the numbers we are talking about by watching this short video.