July 16th

Well folks, this is a bit backwards and all over the place, but I end up having to save the longer blogs with many photos for a time where I can access decent internet. I'm still currently in Brissy, at the State Library while Dad soaks up some sun outside. I'm hoping to try and finish blogs up until this point, but that may be a little to much to ask.....we'll see how I go.

July 16th: Today we woke up quite early to check out of the apartment in Bargara and drove the 15 minutes into Bundaberg to the rum factory. We ended up catching the first guided tour at 10am and proceeded to see exactly how this famous Aussie rum is made.

What an experience. We learnt about all the main ingredients, like molasses, yeast and distilled water, how it gains its distinctive taste, etc etc. Our first stop on the tour was the molasses vat - a large, wooden warehouse that houses over 3 million litres of molasses. Molasses is the by product of sugar cane crushing, and the sugar cane mill is conveniently located next to the Bundy Factory. When we were told exactly what we were going to be looking at, I imagined a huge vat sitting inside the wooden warehouse. Boy, was I wrong. It turns out, the warehouse is the actual vat. Yup, we walked inside across a catwalk above 3 million litres of molasses just sitting in the warehouse. When we were there, it was currently 3 meters deep, but the warehouse can contain up to 6 meters deep of molasses....which would have been mind-blowing to see. It already was crazy as!!

Next stop was the fermentation and distillery portion of the process, and we were able to see how the alcohol was made from the molasses. The rum factory has a unique distillery process whereby the alcohol is concentrated to over 78% between 2 distillers. After distillation, the alcohol travels by pipeline to hand-made vats of American White Oak, imported from North America! These vats hold over 75 000 litres of alcohol and are worth about 6 million dollars each. There are no screws, bolts, glue ANYTHING holding the vats together, since that could compromise the taste of the alcohol. The rum sits here for a minimum of 2 years, and it's from this particular timber that it gets the distinctive taste and color known to all Aussies. The rum factory has over 15 warehouses containing these oak vats, and each warehouse has anywhere between 15 - 96 vats. Each vat, containing that much alcohol and worth that price....you do the math. Bundaberg is where I'm headed for my job after uni!!

Lastly, we went to the warehouse that contains the bottling process. It's entirely robotized, and the factory produces about 120 of the 700mL bottles a MINUTE. That's over 60 000 bottles a day, 5 days a week. This amount barely keeps up with Australian consumption!! Amazing. The other mind-blowing fact was that Bundy rum only exports 4% to other countries - those are NZ, UK and Canada. They tried a couple years ago to increase production by 30% and export more by introducing ads in North America and the UK, but instead of exports increasing, the Aussie's just ended up drinking 30% more!!

To end the tour, we each got to taste 2 drinks each - all three of us had the classic rum and cola, Dad tried the reserve rum (and almost died it was that potent!!), Cass tried their limited coffee/chocolate sipping liqueur (very tasty as a treat....we bought some to try in hot chocolate!) and I tried their Dark and Stormy - a ginger beer mix with Bundy rum. It was quite tasty.

We also supported the Australian Economy through some Bundaberg merchandise purchases. Namely rum. Heaps and heaps of rum. Hence my question the other post about import laws.....

After the rum factory, we continued onto Noosa, with a quick pit stop along the way at Maccas for Quinn to get his coveted Mc Trigger. The entire trip he has been talking about this McTrigger, which is 2 double cheeseburgers, combined with a chicken burger. You order them separately, and create the masterpiece yourself....it's basically a heart attack in a box times 10. Here is the photo. Disgusting.