Left Hervey Bay after having a wonderful time there. We really enjoyed it and it is a great spot. Bundaberg is about 130kms north. As we got closer to Bundy or Rum City (local speak) we came across lots of sugarcane fields and fruit farms. It is avocado season at the moment and they can be bought so cheaply. This region is known at the ‘salad bowl’ due to all the fruit and veges produced here. We are also in the area known as the Coral Coast and southern Great Barrier Reef. We decided to do our normal system which is drive into a town check out the caravan parks choose one and set up. Well not to be here. All the parks were full! Fully of southerners we were told on more than one occasion. Southerners being NSW and Victorians escaping the cold winters. So we ended up free camping at a recommended free camp by the Information Centre. It is called Sharon Gorge about 20kms out of town. Basically it is a layby on the side of the road, a busy road I might add. The free camp has loos, bbqs, picnic tables. There is a 1km walk to the gorge but not the kind of gorge we were expecting. Basically it is a track through a forest to the Burnett River that has very limited access due to being private property. In a quieter area it would have been a good stop as the bbqs were spotless and the toilets very clean. We have noticed that the free camps on the east coast aren’t as good as in WA ie. here they just tend to be on the side of the road whereas in WA they tend to be further off the road. We quickly made a call to a caravan park to check availability for tomorrow (Saturday) and booked ourselves in. After leaving the free camp we headed back to Bundaberg and settled into the caravan park. After lunch we did the tour to the Bundaberg Rum distillery. $25/head so not a cheap tour but interesting. The basis of the rum is mollasses and there is a huge holding pit up to 5m deep of mollasses, the smell was overbearing but I liked it. We saw the bondstore where they hold the rum for 2 years where it matures in oak vats. The raw rum gets it flavour from the wood. The wood is oakwood from the American/Canadian border and vats are made locally in the traditional manner. It costs $75,000 to have a vat built but they last 80-100 years. The next process is bottling which is done on site and the premix cans are canned in Sydney. There is $2B worth of rum on site! The entrance fee includes two free tastings and not the piddly tastings you get in wineries, these are standard size drinks so for non rum drinkers this was quite a challenge. We tried the Royale liquer which was very tasty. It is made of rum, caramel, chocolate, vanilla and coffee flavour and it was delish especially with cream. Comparable to Baileys or Kaluha. Will buy some of that as the distillery is the only place it can be bought. Some trivia, the bear was introduced in 1961 due to the southerners (ie Vic, NSW) not drinking Bundy as they had the belief it was a tropical drink only drunk in tropics not to be drunk in cold climes. So to capture the market the company wanted to depict that if you drink rum on a cold day you will get warm. They wanted to use a cold weather animal to promote the product and the only Australian animal to resemble the cold is a fairy penquin not the image they wanted so the polar bear was decided upon. The idea being that a nip of rum on a cold day will warm you up and the bear has been an institution since. Now Bundaberg rum is drunk all around Australia in big quantities I might add.
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