We’ve arrived with a sense of relaxation to the lands of the Butchulla people, in what’s now known as Hervey Bay. We acknowledge the Butchulla people as the owners of this land, and pay our respects to their elders.
The sense of relaxation is because we’re staying at my Mum’s place for a couple of nights – and it’s kind of like being home! We’re here every summer, and so the kids (and us) instantly feel at home when we walk in the door. Today, the main stop on the journey from Rockhampton to Hervey Bay was at Bundaberg in the morning. We headed off at about 7:30, trying to make it down to Bundaberg by 11ish – and we weren’t far off, arriving at about 11:20.
The first stop was at Fairymead House Sugar Museum, an incredibly beautiful and historic house that once was the manager’s house on a sugar cane plantation in the town of Fairymead (just north of Bundaberg). Fairymead was the first sugar cane planation in the area. In the 1980s, the house was relatively unused and so was gifted to the Bundaberg council and was relocated it to where it now stands in the Bundaberg Botanical Gardens. Upstairs is the wonderfully restored original house, with plenty of memorabilia from the families that owned it over the years. Then downstairs is a museum that runs through the history of sugar production in the area – something Bundaberg is obviously famous for. We did only have about 45 minutes there, but it was a great visit and it was fun to learn more about sugar cane and the production sugar after spotting sugar cane plantations plenty of times on our trip!
We had a bit of time spare between that and our next activity, and having spotted a couple of macadamia farms on the way into Bundaberg, we headed to the south side of the city to a macadamia farm called, conveniently, Macadamias Australia. It wasn’t a planned visit, so we weren’t able to do one of their guided tours at all – but they do offer a few fun things to do just in their visitor centre / reception area. Firstly, they’ve got a great display of the history of the farm – it’s still a family owned farm, started life as a peanut farm, and went through other produce before settling on macadamias in 2004. They have a really interesting interactive display about macadamias as well, which was great to learn about. But then things got fun: they do some tastings of a few different macadamias, from their raw and roasted nuts, though to the flavoured and choc-coated ones! We grabbed some macadamia ice cream from the cafe and then went for a wander out in their garden where there are a few rows of macadamia trees. They encourage you to pick up your own macadamia nuts from the ground under the trees, and have a bunch of old tree stumps laid around the place with wooden mallets for you to break them open and enjoy! We had a great time finding macadamias on the ground and cracking them open – and even though a bunch of them might’ve been on the ground for ages, they tasted delicious!
The next stop in our rapid tour of Bundaberg was to the Bundaberg Barrel – the home of the Bundaberg Brewed Drinks! The big barrel is their visitor centre, and it sits adjacent to their brewery where all the good stuff is made. We had booked to do one of their tastings, which takes you through all of their brewed soft drinks and then you get to take home a 6 pack of your choice. We’d included the kids on the booking (although they don’t get a 6 pack of their own) – none of them really like soft drink at all, but we thought they might still love to do a bit of the tastings with us. And they did, mostly! Only small sips, but they enjoyed it. We then took a walk through their display at the back of the centre, which includes a short run through of their history and a great, in-depth overview of how they make their brewed drinks.
And the final stop was a quick detour to the Bundaberg Rum Distillery – mostly to continue our collection of Big Things around Australia and get a photo with the Big Rum Bottle! I did go for a quick wander through the distillery shop out of curiosity. I’m not a rum drinker at all, but I know that people (especially up this way) love Bundy Rum. They had a tiny bottle of Bundy, which I thought would be fun to get – I didn’t feel like I could come to Bundaberg without trying their rum.
We’ve had a wonderful evening catching up with Mum tonight, and she even made sure we got some cake for Alexander, Daniel and Debbie’s birthdays! Tomorrow will be a relaxed day catching up with family before the final week of this amazing adventure kicks in.
