The Travelling Canadian » Brisbane to Cairns

Things to do in Bundaberg – Bundaberg Rum Distillery review

Jeremy — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 20:49:59 +0000

Things to do in Bundaberg

While driving from Brisbane to Cairns we made a few stops along the way. We stayed for a couple of days in Bundaberg which, to be honest is not the most exciting town to visit, BUT we did find a couple of things that we thought were really cool.

Bundaberg Rum Distillery Tour

While staying in Melbourne I got to liking Bundaberg rum, it’s tasty, it goes down smooth and not that bad of a price either. I also LOVE the Bundaberg ginger beer (I miss it so much) it is a brewed by a different company, but also located in Bundaberg. I decided I wanted to visit the Bundaberg distillery and the Bundaberg ginger beer headquarters which, luckily for us, is on the way to Cairns. My girlfriend also wanted to see Loggerhead turtles hatching at the Mon Repos turtle rookery which is not far from Bundaberg. For this post I will just focus on the Bundaberg Distillery and the Bundaberg ginger beer headquarters.

The Bundaberg distillery is just across the river in an industrial looking area. They spiced it up a little by painting one of their buildings. I think it looks pretty cool

When you get to the main area of the Bundaberg Rum Distillery they have a giant bottle of rum. We decided to make some creative pictures.

God Drinks Bundaberg Rum

After your photos with the GIANT bottle of Bundaberg rum you can go into the “museum” you can take a self guided tour that explains the history of Bundaberg Rum, it shows pictures of the fires that occurred at the Distillery and there are videos as well. After the self guided tour you go on a guided tour through the distillery (no cameras allowed sorry) you get to see all the molasses they use, where they store it and you can taste it too. They show you the whole process (sugar cane is processed off site and the molasses is brought in) right up to bottling the rum.

After the guided tour you can visit the bar! They give you two free drinks! they also have limited edition Bundaberg royal liqueur made with chocolate and coffee, it is SOOOO good but only for sale at the Bundaberg Distillery. We bought a bottle and brought it home with us. We took a couple pictures at the bar

We had a good time at the Bundaberg Distillery it is not something to go out of your way for, but if you are stopping in Bundaberg for the night then head over to the Distillery and check it out. The price was $25 per person, a bit steep but a cool experience that you can only get once (unless you live in Bundy!)

Bundaberg Ginger Beer Headquarters

After the Bundaberg Rum Distillery we visited the Bundaberg Ginger beer headquarters. I wont go into detail but I just have to say I LOVE BUNDABERG GINGER BEER and here is a picture I took

I love Bundaberg Ginger Beer

The headquarters for Bundaberg Ginger beer is not to far from the rum distillery and I am pretty sure it was on the same road as the trailer park we were staying at. Plus you can not miss it, the building is a giant half barrell!

Bundaberg Ginger Beer Building

It was free to visit, they let you sample all of their drinks and they sell them super cheap. I love the ginger beer, but the peach and apple ales were delicious too! The difference is they brew all of their drinks, they are non-alcoholic but the brewing process brings out all of the flavours, making them delicious!

After visiting the Bundaberg Rum Distillery and the Bundaberg ginger beer headquarters we went to the Mon Repos Turtle Rookery. I’ll leave that for another post though.

If you want to see more of Australia without ever leaving your computer chair, just toss your email in that box to the left and I’ll send you an update with my newest post!

Dunk Island Review

Jeremy — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 11:42:26 +0000

Dunk Island Visit and Review

While in Australia we visited a couple of Islands. We really wanted to go to Fraser Island and Lizard Island but never had the chance (there was a hurricane warning while we had the chance to go to Fraser Island and the island was closed) we ended up taking advantage of the massive waves and surfing instead.

We ended up visiting Green Island and Dunk Island. We had a blast at Dunk Island so that is why I decided to do a Dunk Island review.

We were living in Cairns at the time and drove down from Cairns to Mission Beach. The trip took about two hours, to get to Mission Beach but it is a pretty cool drive (lots of sugar cane fields and mountains) there are two ways to get from Mission Beach to Dunk Island that we knew of. You can take the ferry for $56 return per person and takes about 20 minutes to get there, OR take the Dunk Island water taxi which costs $30 return and only takes 10 minutes. For that price you cant lose! We met up with the water taxi on Mission Beach

The water taxi from Dunk Island to Mission Beach

After the quick ten minute ride we were ready to enjoy Dunk Island! The first thing we did was check out the beach (because that’s where we were dropped off )

Checking out the Beach at Dunk Island

Catamaran on Dunk Island

Dunk Island Catamaran

After seeing what the island had to offer, which is actually alot (they have a tonne of water sports, golf, tennis, a hotel, snorkelling, great walking trails and more) we decided to walk up to the top of the mountain! Ok it turned out the trip to the top of the mountain and back was going to take a long time (and we had to be back in time to catch the water taxi) So we just went on a hike for about an hour. There is a lot to see on the walking trails

walking trail on Dunk Island

Cool strangling vine going up this tree

Just watch out for the spiders!

Would NOT want to walk into this spider web!

Huge spider

Sammy thought that this was a pretty neat tree. It turns out this is a fig tree, but it wasnt the biggest fig tree we saw while in Australia! I’ll get to that in another post though.

A neat little fig tree

After enjoying the natural beauty of the island and dodging man eating spiders, the trail led out to a secluded beach, lined with coconut trees! Ahhhhhhhhhhh nice

A beautiful beach lined with Coconut trees

We took a little stroll down the beach

If you look hard you can find neat things on the beach. I found this little starfish (it looks like he's hailing a cab!)

After seeing all of the natural beauty on the island we were ready to do something a bit crazy. We decided to go tubing! Dunk Island has all kinds of water sports to try, but we only had time to sneak in one event so we went with tubing. The price was fair I think it was $59 for all three and we stayed out for quite a while!

We had such a blast tubing, we went on a three person tube and hung on for dear life

After tubing got our heart rates going we sat down at the beach bar, had a few beers and waited for the water taxi to arrive.

After having such a great time on Dunk Island none of us wanted to leave! If we knew the island was going to be this much fun we would have booked 3 nights at the resort. If we ever come back to Australia we will definitely re-visit Dunk Island.

The day did not end here though after the water taxi ride we noticed that there were massive Coconuts on the beach, which we collected and used to make some tropical drinks that night

Also one of the most exciting moments of our trip happened on the way home when we got to see a Cassowary in the wild! It was pretty exciting and I will put a post up about that later.

Thanks for reading, and leave a comment below

You can see some more pictures in the gallery below and view them full size.