The Next Level: Bundaberg to Cape Palmerston

29/6/2015

Lovely breakfast outdoors and a late start from the campsite as my first planned destination was the Bundaberg Distillery Company and they only open at 10am.

I booked the full tour of the distillery at 11am and had a blast of a time. Chantelle, Adam and Steve, our tour guides were heaps of fun and provided us with a lot of information about the plant and the distillation process. The main buzzword was “Huzzar!” - we had to shout that whenever we liked something. Huzzar I've learned afterwards is a traditional cheer from the 18^th Century.

The process

Bundy R. Bear

Huzzah!

Unfortunately we had to lock all our electronic devices before we could enter the factory, because the millions of liters of 78% rum that are kept here can make an explosive atmosphere. They had a big fire in the 1936 where some vats (the huge barrels, containing around 75,000 liters) burned down and were spilled into the local river which made a lot of wildlife drunk and killed a lot of fish.

1936 fire & spill - look at the size of these fish in the second photo!

Anyway, we were extremely lucky because they were maintaining some of the distilling equipment. Where most people could only look through big glass windows, we could walk through the factory and experience everything to the fullest. Apparently today was the first time in 20 years that they took groups through this part of the distillery, and we were only the second group in total that enjoyed that. Even some staff from the factory joined us for this experience as they haven't been in there themselves due to safety requirements. Awesome!

Quite interesting fact is that they store rum in this facility that is worth about $2.1 billion (for the German speakers: $2.1 Milliarden, which would be around Euro 1.5 Milliarden), hence they got a prison grade electric fence all around. The vats are all stored in 'bond stores' so no tax has been paid yet on it – whenever they take it out for bottelling, a whopping 70% tax on the value gets paid to the Australian tax office. No wonder alcohol is so expensive over here!

Another thing I learned was that they got storage capacity of 5 million liters of molasses, the dark, gluey stuff that is a waste product from the sugar mill next to the distillery that is used to produce rum. We tried some and it has got quite an interesting taste, well, almost a disgusting taste actually.

In the museum before the tour started, I saw a National Geographic show about the Bundaberg Distillery which was founded in 1888 and recently had its 125 year anniversary. Through this movie I learned what the story behind the 'Road to recover' labeled rum is. In the year of the 125^th anniversary, Bundaberg was flooded and the company helped the town and people to recover from the flood with money and generated some through this special edition. After all, 95% of Bundaberg rum is consumed in Australia, about 3% in New Zealand and the rest somewhere around Contiki Tours.

This showed that I was ignorant with my comment about the 'Road to recovery' in my last blog post. Coincidentally, I listened to a podcast between Dave Asprey and I think Dr John Gray where they literally said: you can be ignorant, but you shouldn't be arrogant. From what I take out of this is: if you have been ignorant to a fact and are proven incorrect, don't be arrogant about it and correct your view. After all, a lot of information was just not available when you formed your opinion in the past and new research or experiments might proof the old paradigm wrong.

The rum tasting in the end was interesting. I went for extremely small shots (driving!) and socially engineered my way into getting 4 samples instead of the 2 that were included in the tour. Happy days. I have to admit that their newer products, their premium lines like the Small Batch or the Master Distillers Blend or Collection are so much nicer to drink compared with their very rough entry level rums. No wonder they start to win some gold and double gold medals for these products internationally.

In 2000 Bundaberg Distillery was bought by a big multinational, Diageo. While they provided some capital for much needed investments and expanded the product range (according to our guides), one thing they have done is to sideline Bundy R Bear, the awesome mascot of the brand. Reason? Apparently having a bear on the bottle and in the advertisement makes it more appealing to the youth to drink the rum, so the good old 'political correctness' story. I probably don't need to spill the beans in regards to what I think about that.

Didn't know that Bundy R. played cricket too!

In summary, it was an extremely interesting visit and I had to buy some merchandise from their shop before I left.

The drive to Gladstone was eventless, as usually I was listening to podcasts to sharpen my mind and have something to think about. Gladstone is not my cup of tea, the huge refinery on one end of town and the massive power stations and coal terminal on the other end don't really appeal to my eyes. My stop there was brief, only to stock up on groceries and grass fed meat from the local butcher.

I cracked on through Yarwun (where 2 of our ship unloaders are in use, but too far out on the wharf to really see them) to my destination of the day, Mount Larcom. I stayed at the local showgrounds (where usually markets and events are held) and had a great time cooking and eating outdoors, reading a bit of 'The art of thinking big' written by David J. Schwartz in 1959 while enjoying the sunset. This book comes highly recommended and is freely available in the internet as the copyrights have expired.

Distance traveled: 234km

30/6/2015

Started with a bacon & eggs and Aero Press Bulletproof coffee in the beautiful Mount Larcom showgrounds. Despite being near the Bruce Highway (A1) and the train tracks that transport a lot of the coal mined in Queensland, the night was relatively quiet.

The first stop of the day was in Rockhampton, again, to buy groceries and have a coffee. Disappointing coffee actually. I really need to stop that habit again as it usually doesn't produce good results outside of cities and I often end up with a questionable brew in my hands.

After a longish drive, I quickly stopped at Clairview as nature was calling.

Clairview, at the rest stop

Some local artwork on the facilities

I then drove on to Cape Palmerston, a very remote but beautiful campsite. Located only 100m away from the beach, the owners here run a fantastic camp site, featuring an open fire place, a nice camp kitchen, immaculate amenities, helpful staff and lots of flowers and wildlife around the site.

Location, location, location!

Col, one of the owners, gave me the required information for my run, a 4.8km lap on the beach and trails that I thoroughly enjoyed. There was a lot of wildlife that I saw on the run, hundreds of small blue crabs on the beach, at least 15 kangaroos (mostly escaping when they saw me running towards them) and quite a lot of different birds. Taking pictures with the iPhone while running doesn't produce the best results, but I think it illustrates the beauty of this place.

Taken while running on the beach

... and the trail ...

... and the dirt road - can you spot the kangaroos in the background? A whole group of them was there watching a crazy dude running for fun.

And the beach again - at low tide

Inspired by the run, I took some photos of the flowers and the park before heading to the kitchen to get some food going.

The only thing missing here is mobile phone coverage. There is a spot on the hill near the office where you can get a bit reception, but it is quite unstable even there and not good enough for an internet connection. A price I gladly pay for a place like this.