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…

Bris-Vegas

Or Bris-ney Land or Brissy.

Today we’ve ventured into the city to explore – but not without Janice & Paul setting us the “Brisbane Challenge”. The challenge consisted of 10 things :

• Find the Windmill
• Take an artistic photo of the Clock Tower
• Find the Vegetable Strainer ball
• What is the ‘purse’ all about?
• Find the Kangaroo sculpture
• Take a photo of Parliament House
• Review the “Elephant & Wheelbarrow” pub
• Where is the Wollemi Pine?
• Find the rudest sculpture on the Nepalese temple
• Locate the Bull Horns sculpture

Armed with the challenge and the added complication of not using our Rough Guide book, the local bus took us into town. Public transport appears to be very convenient with a clear website and customer service line that gives you the connections, costs, times and local information such as ‘its past the Brisbane Boys College’. Brilliant – and the tickets allow you to go to somewhere en route as part of your journey as long as you’re back on the bus.

We utilised this by looking into Toowong where the Centrelink offices were. Centrelink are the company that would be the equivalent of the job centre and benefits office in the UK and are responsible for providing Tax File Number (a bit like the NI number, NHS number and social security number all rolled into one.) Rather unhelpfully was that its actually the Australian Tax Office (ATO) that needed to sort ours out as we’re non-residents. Must do that!

Brisbane is home to approx 1m people and named after the original Queensland Governor. It is located on the banks of the Brisbane river and as a result has many different styles of bridges that allow residents and travellers to move between north and south of the city.

One new bridge is opening in June so we’ll see that at the end of the trip. The bridges are required not only for transportation but because it’s the home of the Bull Shark – arguably more dangerous that the more infamous Great White because its equally home in fresh and salt water and eats anything…hmmmm

A & I found a free walking tour from the Visitor Centre with a youngish local chap who knew his stuff. I reckon he must have a History degree or something similar as the tour was brilliant. Three hours of non-stop facts and figures detailing the birth of Australia to the present day. The company was XXXX and would definitely recommend it to anyone who was visiting the city.

The tour took in the King George Square and the current City Hall that is undergoing a controversial 2 year refurbishment. It is said that the building is sinking much to the annoyance of the council, although it is a fact that the city is built on a swamp. The City Hall also prompts controversy due to its sculpture of the emergence of Australia that depicts the native Aboriginal culture dying out..

A visit to ANZAC Square to commemorate the Australian and New Zealand involvement in the the two World Wars was next. The beautiful calming square has many sculptures to recognise the involvement of the local New Guineans in fighting off the Japanese that prevented the likely invasion of Australia and the role Brisbane played in the command of the South Pacific War.

We learnt about the Brisbane Line; General Macarthur’s backup plan to sacrifice Australian land North of Brisbane to the Japanese should they have invaded and the sensitive way the sculptures recognise the role of the three armed forces and the number of steps up to it on two levels 19 and 18 reflecting the date of the end of WW1.

The rest of the tour took in George St Mall,

the locally revered Empire Theatre,

the old Treasury that’s now a casino,

numerous sculptures including two on our Challenge,

the eco-friendly city library and office building,

the only sculpture of Queen Elizabeth II carrying a purse,

the old red light district and its role in aiding the war effort. It went on to talk about the current political status of Brisbane outside Parliament House, the ghost stories of Queenland University of Technology (QUT),

the Goodwill Bridge and the South Bank, the site of the Brisbane Expo in 1988 that’s being redeveloped into a pleasant walking and recreational area complete with flower gardens and artificial inland beach.

The tour’s style was very focussed at the younger traveller (I feel old!) referring to General Macarthur as G-Mac and how he communicated via Facebook. It was very Australian – shortening everything, giving things nicknames – and made it an enjoyable few hours. Although it was advertised as free, it was a ‘tipped’ tour so a voluntary contribution was requested..

The remainder of the afternoon was spent completing our Challenge,

 

exploring the cultural centre and finding some food

before being picked up by Paul for some fire-twirling.

This was an incredible experience. Paul practices fire-twirling and drumming and coincided with the Full Moon so both troupes were together in a local park. At one point 25 people were fire-twirling at the same time with many more having a go with light-based poise. Both of us had a good with the lights and by all accounts our faces were a picture. It created a wave of excitement and surrealism and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves – another first on the trip!

 

The day ended with a late night visit to the Mount Coot-tha Lookout that overlooks Brisbane and was the site of storage for weapons, fuel and stores during WW2.