Bundaberg

The name ‘Bundaberg’ has long been synonymous with rum and ‘brewed drinks’ (especially ginger beer), but the Bundy rum advertising campaign in the mid-1990s turned its yellow label and polar bear into an Aussie icon and made the town of Bundaberg a bucket-list visit.

While the Bundaberg Barrel and Bundaberg Distillery are well worth a visit, they’re just a drop in the rum bottle of everything ‘Bundy’ and its surrounds have to offer.

Bundaberg Brewed Drinks

The Bundaberg Barrel, on the outskirts of Bundaberg Central, offers a kid-friendly and touristy taste of Queensland’s most famous brewer, with a walk-through interactive exhibit that takes visitors behind-the-scenes in the production process.

You can test your nose and try to identify ingredients from smell alone, watch live cameras trained on various parts of the factory, and learn about the company’s storied history. In the gift shop you can buy a selection of drinks, Bundaberg merchandise and fridge magnets, or do a tasting. If we’re being honest, Bundaberg Barrel is the lolly-water tour, though.

If it’s the Bundy bear you’re interested in, then you need to head to Bundaberg Rum Distillery located in the town’s industrial area. It is, if possible, even more commercial than its softer counterpart, with walls of Bundy merchandise for sale, but you can purchase a shot of its numerous rum varieties and sit at a table to drink it.

Visiting this distillery feels like an Aussie rite of passage, even for non-drinker – who might like to get a photo with the ‘Big Rum Bottle’ out the front.  

Foodie destinations

If you’re an early starter, Bargara yields an array of coffee options. The trendiest without doubt is Unknown, a hole-in-the-wall café hidden away in the Centrepoint arcade.

The best coffee of our visit, however, came at an unexpected venue: while my wife tasted a selection of gins at Kalki Moon in south Bundaberg, I sipped a mid-afternoon flat white that was huge and strong and delicious.

If succulent seafood is your jam, make a lunch stop at Grunske’s By the River. It’s both a fish market and a restaurant perched over the Burnett River, where quite a few of the fish are caught, so they’re pretty much still flapping when they hit the frypan.

If you don’t do seafood we can recommend the rump steak, although be warned – Bundy eateries serve up King Kong Bundy-sized meals and Grunske’s 500-gram steak is literally two steaks.

If you can bear to eat more after Grunske’s, Macadamia Australia is worth a visit. A winding path through a macadamia grove leads to suspiciously corporate-looking building and reception area, but visitors can try free samples and also take a few ripe macadamias outside and smash them with a mallet on a specially carved tree stump.

Macadamias are the hardest nut to crack and there’s a definite knack to breaking the shell without destroying the nut inside. The toughest challenge, though, is sampling the product and leaving without a few bags of (reasonably priced) macadamias, which come in plain, salted, white chocolate, milk chocolate and dark chocolate.

It’s not difficult to see how the Windmill Café gets its name; the object in question towers over the entrance to this inviting eatery, resplendent with shady gardens, a swing seat, and teepees for the kids to play in. Even though it’s right in the heart of Bargara, just south of Mon Repos, it could be in the middle of the country.

The menu is approachable but offers good variety, including all-day breakfast and bigger lunch items. The coffee is strong and delicious and a large one comes in a bowl-sized cup with rounded edges, just as coffee should. Also worth checking out are its sister cafés the Garden Mill and the Beach Mill, at opposite ends of Bargara.

Just south of Bargara in Woongarra is Tinaberries, a family strawberry farm that has grown into one of the region’s top foodie drawcards. Friendly signposts guide visitors through landscaped gardens to the main farmhouse building and lawned area, where boules and other outdoor games are on hand. The farm’s resident kelpies and pet galah also keep visitors entertained.

In strawberry season (June to October) visitors can pick a punnet of fresh produce, and between harvest times Tinaberries sells strawberry and mango ice cream and cereal (it also has macadamia trees).

A good choice for lunch or dinner is Bargara Beach Hotel, an inviting pub that exudes the essence of summer with palm trees lining its frontage, coastal décor and loads of outdoor seating. The pub-style menu has wide variety of options, everything from seafood to stews, pizzas, steaks and Mexican food.

Bundaberg’s best activities

If you’re seeking more salubrious pursuits than drinking rum or stuffing your face, a sure bet is the Bundaberg Botanic Gardens. The gardens themselves are free to walk around, but also located within these leafy grounds are the Hinkler Hall of Aviation (a museum dedicated to the exploits of famed Aussie aviator Bert Hinkler) and the historic Mon Repos house (Hinkler’s residence in England, which was shipped brick-by-brick to Bundy and rebuilt as a posthumous honour).

The Australian Sugar Cane Railway is a real steam engine – or possibly diesel locomotive, depending on which day you visit – that traces the perimeter of the gardens and, with a family ticket just $15 for a 15-minute ride, it’s a wonderful way to see the gardens should rain or sweltering heat prohibit walking.

If you’re feeling peckish afterwards, the 1928 café is on site, but be advised – it has no air conditioning!

While Mon Repos Beach offers an unforgettable experience of the natural world, it’s never going to win the Photogenic Beach of the Year Award. Just a short drive south, however, is a string of beaches of the type one expects to see in Queensland.

Where Moneys Creek flows into Kellys Beach, for example, it creates an inviting lagoon perfect for families, while Elliot Heads and Mays Island have the pale sands and turquoise waters synonymous with this part of the world.

Monsoon Aquatics is a working coral farm and research centre set up near the mouth of the Burnett River in Burnett Heads. On hot and humid days, the tour guide offers visitors a fan, as the coral farms are situated in stuffy sheds.

If there’s anything you didn’t know about coral before the tour, you’ll know it afterwards – a few minutes shaved off the talk and donated to admiring the coral wouldn’t go amiss – but it’s an opportune chance to see the dazzling colours of these amazing lifeforms at a proximity not even diving or snorkelling permits.

Lady Musgrave Island tour

Bundaberg is not far from the southern tip of the Great Barrier Reef and Lady Musgrave Experience offers day cruises out to Lady Musgrave Island.

You’ll be allocated a group as you embark – Turtles, Dolphins or Clownfish – and that determines the order of the day’s activities. If you’re at all prone to seasickness, Travacalm before the 2.5-hour trek out to the reef is recommended.

Lady Musgrave is the archetypal desert island of literature and movies – beautiful, but you wouldn’t want to be shipwrecked there (you can camp for up to 21 days at certain times of the year, but you must bring your own food and water).

For about six months the island is home to white-capped noddy terns, which make an annual pilgrimage from Japan to nest in the Pisonia trees. This is the sort of symbiosis in which nature seems to specialise – the trees provide nesting sites and the birds’ poo provides nutrients (the island’s ‘soil’ is largely composed of crushed coral and all rainwater and nutrients seep through to the sea below).

So far, so co-operative – but the trees aren’t satisfied with bird scat. During the spring they produce extremely sticky flowers which litter the forest floor, and if a bird steps on one there’s a good chance it will get stuck, die of thirst, and start to decompose – providing more nutrients for the tree’s hungry roots.

The guided tour crosses the island’s cool, leafy interior and emerges on the other side before returning in a semi-circle along the coral-strewn shore. During green turtle nesting season you’re likely to see turtle tracks on the softer sand, while in the shallows you might spot turtles, black-tipped reef sharks, and stingrays. Phase two in the tour is a cruise over the reef on a glass-bottomed tender.

This boat has almost no draw, so in its skilled pilot’s hands it can pass inches above the coral without damaging or disturbing it. The formations this far south in the Great Barrier Reef are primarily green, so it’s not the kaleidoscope of colour you find in reefs off Port Douglas or in the Pacific Islands, but everyone aboard is captivated and eagle-eyed passengers may spot green turtles at rest in the divots of the brain-shaped coral mounds.

Last, it’s a healthy buffet lunch on the mega-yacht-sized pontoon before getting kitted out for an afternoon’s snorkelling. All abilities are represented, from absolute novices –the friendly Lady Musgrave team show them the ropes with the aid of a flotation ring – through to experienced snorkellers and scuba divers.

While the outer part of the reef delivers parrot fish and several other fish species, if you have the stamina it’s worth flippering to the little channel that feeds into the ‘aquarium’ – an aquamarine hollow that teems with fish species and unusually colourful coral formations.

Where to stay

The plot of land on which the Turtle Sands resort now sits first opened as a caravan park in the 1970s. The NRMA purchased the land a few years back and set about constructing this resort, careful to consult locals and environmental experts along the way.

It sits cheek-by-jowl with Mon Repos Beach and its famous nesting turtles, an excellent reason to stay there in itself, but Turtle Sands also makes a handy base from which to explore the Bundaberg region.

The resort provides a variety of accommodation from tent sites up to large and well-appointed cabins, plus it has EV chargers on site, a camp kitchen, and several private beach access points.

The resort’s centrepiece, however, is its 440,000-litre turtle-shaped saltwater pool. The climate, especially in summer, means that once you’re in the pool you don’t want to get out.

There’s unlimited wi-fi access throughout the resort, including poolside, so whether the kids want to play Roblox or you need to send a work email, you’re always connected. The Turtle Sands reception office opens at 8am and the staff can whip you up a proper espresso coffee.

Eco measures at Turtle Sands include:

• The park has EV charging points outside the studio apartments and many of the cabins.
• The resort’s roads are sand combined with a special material that prevents water run-off – it goes straight back into groundwater.
• Cabins and other buildings are painted darker colours and the windows have hoods to minimise the light reflected towards the beach (turtle nesting areas). There are also trees to screen the beach from the park.
• Air conditioners in cabins will only run when the door is closed.
• Access to beaches is roped off between 6pm and 6am during turtle nesting and hatching season to ensure their activity is not disturbed.
• When we visited, final approvals were being sought for a solar power installation.