Bundaberg - Home of the Bundy Rum

Sugarcane. Alcohol. Ocean. Rachel

Bundaberg produces a significant amount of Australias produce each year, marks the beginning of the Great Barrier Reef and is a hot-spot for all kinds of drink production, fresh foods, nature (including turtle hatching) and beaches.

Being a 'Bundabergian' herself, Rachel may be biased, but she thinks its 100% a must-visit location! Bundaberg is the home of a famous rum distillery that has a big white bear as its logo. We visited the Bundy Rum Factory during our visit, along with several other attractions such as the Ohana cider house, Hinkler Botanical Gardens and Museum, Shalom Markets, Bundaberg Gingerbeer and Soda Factory, as well as several surrounding beaches and smaller country townships (such as Bucca and Gin Gin).

It probably has enough publicity already but we will talk about Bundaberg rum factory anyway.

The city of Bundaberg produces a lot of sugar. You will see many paddocks covered in sugar cane growing from the rich red soil. The sugar produced goes all around the world but a significant part stays in Bundaberg and becomes a key ingredient in the rum process.

When making sugar from cane one of the biproducts is molasses. Instead of being wasted this molasses is used to make the rum. On the tour you'll see an entire warehouse full of the stuff, essentially a 2 or 3 Olympic swimming pools worth of sweet smelling brown semi-liquid you even get a taste test.

The rest of the tour you follow fancy looking metal pipes connected to large tanks where yeast is added and then everything gets fermented, refined and matured untill you end up with whatever flavor they have chosen for that particular barrel. Actually that was an interesting fact, they have to get these special types of barrels from overseas that doesn't give way under pressure but also doesn't make the rum taste bad.

At the end of the tour you get some tickets for some samples. I quite enjoyed the original one but the banana flavoured on reminded me of childhood medicine.

There is lots of merchandise in the gift shop at the end. One thing I would purchase if I were richer is one of the Bundaberg long sleeve fishing shirts they look so good. As for buying rum it's hard to know whether you'll get a better deal at the liquor store or in duty free but I guess since you're there anyway you could buy some. (Duty free is the way to go if you can)

Simialar but less alcoholic you have another Bundaberg factory, this time producing ginger beer. This stuff is so good it's the top quality stuff we see on the shelves in new Zealand. This factory although smaller than the rum factory produces a large variety of soft drinks besides ginger beer. When you do the tour (a short walk reading off the walls and looking at TV screens) you then come around to the tasting bench where you get to sample so many different flavours and experience a sugar influx.

My two favourites are the classic ginger beer and the lemon lime bitters. If I remember correctly the diet version of the bitters may have actually been better as it sugar is reduced but the flavour of the bitters actually increases. (Have a go let us know)

More alcoholic but less well known. A new player on the Bundaberg field is the Okahana cider place lol a cidery?

This is Rachel's new favorite place in Bundaberg and like any good brewery it had a sampling platter. The 2 owners/cider entrepreneurs of this small business were on sight and served us these samples. Whilst enjoy the range of ciders in a relaxed, friendly open environment with a great indoor outdoor flow. We learned how they started out with a farm in Childers and were expending their business onwards and upwards.