Crazy couple on a bike

Wayne & Claire are some fellow travellers who we bumped into in the internet cafe in Agnes Water. Rather than hire a car or van, jump on the Greyhound or fly, they've decided to cycle around Australia!!!

They started from Sydney may months ago and hope to achieve their goal in about 3 years total..

Incredible people - you can see their blog here

Nibble Island

We're back online!!! Forgive the delay but you'll see we've had some fun & games :)

So, nibble island!!! It's real name is Middle Island and is part of the Eurimbula National Park..it also happens to be the home of very friendly (!!!) sandflies!




Warnings had been given to us back in Singapore about these beasts for Fraser Island. Maybe they're also travelling the East Coast?

This exciting adventure was given to us free by Tribal Travel for booking many options with them so the only costs incurred were the National Parks $69 or £39 and consisted of a flight to the island and overnight camping...what a bargain!




The journey from Agnes Water was about 20mins and Bruce, our legendary pilot had only recently got permission to offer this camping adventure to tourists due to the controls placed on National Park permits.





The Island is also home to Bustard Head Lighthouse that has a volunteer keeper to ensure everything is okay and hosts guided tours from the town three times a week. As a result the island is pretty much inhabited so the idea of camping on a desolate island was too good to be true.




The semi-permanent camp we shared with a few others but it made the trip.



Kayaks, balls, frisbees etc were made available to us all and walking maps around the place gave the freedom to explore at your own pace.



Amber & I took off for the lighthouse and the sea on the south tip of the island encountering a rugged track for the 4WDs from Agnes Water to use that also was home to an incredible amount of butterflies. Amber was in heaven!




The track also gave us our first glimpse of the red rocky ground that Australia is famed for. Lots of lines of colour (Mum you'd love it!!) and amazing contrasts that made photography just brilliant :)





As we reached the southern tip looking back to the towns of 1770 and Agnes Water, huge rocks were dotted on the shore. If the weather had been better they would have proven ideal sunbathing location but unfortunately whilst we were trekking the weather turned and became overcast.










As we're in Queensland's winter, it gets dark approx 6pm so the sunsets weren't to be missed.




The sunsets couldn't have come at the wrong time. It coincided with the high tide so for the first time in non-stop cricket history, huge shadows and incoming tide stopped play...rubbish!

A sneaky campfire was set up on the beach and out came the drinking games...Needless to say the rest of the evening was a haze.

One of the interesting highlights of travelling is meeting new people and it was my privilege to meet Samuel from Liechtenstein - one of the country's 35,000 population!!! I've now made it my mission to visit Vadoz, the capital..

Bruce picked us up by place the following morning between 10-11 ready for the next group who were being dropped off. A great trip and one that'll be fondly remembered for many reasons including the sandflies..

Fingers Crossed

We'ved received many emails from anxious family members and friends awaiting an update into our travels so wanted to let you all know whats happened to cause the delay...

Nothing major to worry about although we've had a funny problem with the netbook in that the 'o' key is somehow locked in. After many attempts at trying to resolve it, it looks as though we're not going to be able to fix it in the conventional style with new parts etc.

The solution will unfortunately have to be fewer updates and sometimes with 0's rather than o's.


It is incredibly frustrating as we've had so much fun over the last few weeks and want to share with you the photos but without the netbook requires a lot of manual web coding (thanks to Blogger!!) and due to the relatively slow internet speeds and lack of wifi, takes a while to upload the many photos!!

Keep in touch
T&Ax

I Love My..Drink!

So, there was only one place that we needed to visit; the famous Bundaberg Rum Distillery!!

As we set off on public transport from the centre of the town, we were told by the helpful bus driver that we could also visit the Schmeider’s Cooperage and Bundaberg Soft Drinks Company free of charge! That’s what we like..

Coopering is the alternative name for the industry that makes barrels. It’s a hard skill to learn and Bundaberg is home of the latest coopers that are responsible for the construction and maintenance of the large casks used by the Distillery, as well as smaller casks for public purchase. A litre barrel could cost upwards of $500!

The free workshop and museum has hands-on barrel experiences where you could learn how to put together a barrel as well as a DVD to see how the professionals do it. Who knew that the small barrels were made of returned large barrels?

Many treated timber souvenirs were on offer from boomerangs to clocks and fortunately Australia have strict rules on the movement of timber across states. The bank manager was very happy!

Off we trundled to the rum distillery and another Amber-ism is worth noting. Firstly, look at the photo below and draw your attention to the size of the building and lettering proudly advertising “Welcome to the home of Bundaberg Rum”. Approx 200m from the sign, Amber said, “so where is the rum distillery?!”….

$25 paid for a guided tour around the facility and after moving through electric fences and secure entrances, and removing everything that had batteries, notepads, pens, cameras and pretty much anything other than ourselves, we entered the main production centre. Huge multi-million litre molasses wells dotted around the place and store the predominant ingredient of the famous rum.

Sugar cane fields surround Bundaberg and the outlying areas for miles around and the raw ingredients are delivered to the sugar cane mill next door. Convenient eh! The mill turns out molasses, a by-product from sugar production that just so happens to help distilling processes. We were told that starting next month, molasses trains enter the distillery every hour 24 hours a day for 6 months and are stored in massive multimillion litre molasses wells. A deep sugary liquorice smell coats the plant.

An impressive array of pipes, fermenters, tubes etc fills the factory next door that distills the molasses, treats the yeast and creates the original 57% ABV alcohol from which Bundaberg rum originates.

Massive bond warehouses are on site that store the incredible American White Oak casks of rum. These casks give the rum its deep wooden colour and stretch to many storeys high. Each one is estimated to hold approx $6M of rum and there must have been at least 50 on site, probably more. Each warehouse is strictly monitored for tax reasons and we weren’t allow to cross the yellow line!

Australia law dictates that dark rum must be distilled for at least 2 years before it can be sold hence the massive security protecting the liquor. They also store a combination of different ages of rum to protect against disaster such as the fire of 1936 where the open casks were hit by lightning causing a huge fire that set not only the distillery alight but some of the town. The fish in the nearby river were poisoned and raw alcohol ran through the drains of Bundaberg.

It had repercussions that lasted over a decade due to the 2 year aging requirement and the outbreak of WW2 where rum was commandeered for the armed forces. Public sale of Bundaberg rum didn’t re-occur until the late 1940s. Nowadays a mathematically calculated wall surrounds each bonded warehouse to contain the volume of liquor held inside to prevent such a disaster.

The main interest of the tour was the two free tastings per person in the specially created BondStore and bar. It was only at this point that Amber & I realised that in our rush we’d forgotten to have breakfast. It was about noon?!

Bundaberg Red, Bundaberg Reserve, Bundaberg premixed Dry & Lime and the exclusive Bundaberg Liquer, that was only available to purchase at the BondStore were tested. Our favourite was the Dry & Lime and Liquer but the others went down well :)

Even Bill and Mulligan had a taste…

We tried to have photos of all but after the first one it didn’t quite work!

 

A sneaky purchase of said liquer for Joe at Christmas and a mixture of more pre-mixed drinks for later and our time was up. A quick run around the museum to catch up on the facts and a few photos by the massive Bundaberg rum bottle and we were off…

No time for the Bundaberg Soft Drinks Company as we needed to eat and get back to the bus. This is one of the downfalls of travelling by Greyhound in that the departure time of the bus is obviously the same as the arrival time the day before. As we’re on a bit of a tight schedule it was a little frustrating but hey ho!

After a bit of lunch (sausage roll and veggy roll) in the cosmopolitan cafe style town centre watching people pass and cars move around the middle, Bundy’s character had worn off on us and were sad to leave..

 

Next stop Agnes Water and the Town of Seventeen Seventy…