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13/2/2011
Today we went to visit the famous Bundaberg Rum factory. Bundaberg rum is famous in Australia and can only be bought here. Kirsty and I have aquired a taste for it so we thought it was only fitting to go and see how it is made. Our first stop on the tour was the molasis shed. Molasis is a by product of sugar cane and is very very sweet surprisingly enough and we got to taste some raw molasis, which Kirsty didn't like very much but it just tastes like liquorise, so it wasn't too bad. Next we moved onto the fermentation tanks, now these were big tanks and it takes 36 hours for the process to occur but it only produces 8% alcohol, which is not strong enough for rum. The liquid then went through three distilleration processes that knocked the alcohol content to 78%, much better. However at this point it is put into massive casks to be stored for a minimum for two years. Each one of these cask holds over 200,000 bottles worth of rum, and they have 300 casks. After this we got to see how it was bottled, labelled and quality checked. Then it was time for the good part, the free samples. Kirsty and I tried a number of different types of rum, rum liquer, and pre-mixed rum drinks and all were very good.
That night we travelled out to a place called Mon Rope as there is a turtle sanctuary there. In the leaflet it offers sightings on nesting turtles and the chance to see hatchlings emerging for the nest. Kirsty and I were really excited about seeing both these events but they cannot say we will definately see one of these events as the turtles are wild animals. Kirsty and I were both very excited to see the turtles, so once we got into the information center we were reading all the information as quickly as we could in case our group got called to the beach to witness something amazing. It works by rangers and volenteers searching up and down the beach for turtles emerging from the water to lay their eggs, or looking for hatchlings emerging from the sand and we are all placed in groups. As a sighting happens a group will be called to the beach to view what is happening. We were unfortunately in the last group so we had a long wait. We watched lots of information dvd's and listened to one of the rangers giving a talk all about the various turtles both in Australia and around the world. However by 11:30pm Kirsty and I were beginning to get the feeling that we weren't going to see anything. Just as we were about to give out and go home our group got called to the beach woo hoo !!! As we got down to the sight we were actually going just to dig up a nest that had already hatched just to count how many hatchlings there were. We were alittle disappointed with these news, but once we got there and the ranger started to dig up the nest lots of little hatchligs appeared. They were the cutest little things and the ranger said they must just be the weaker ones in the nest. As more appeared the ranger decided it was best to cover the nest back over and let them emerge on their own. After this we were heading back to the centre to leave and just before we left the beach and the ranger he got a call to say there were hatchlings ready to be released and we could go and watch. We got down there and there were loads of little hatchlings all scrabbling on top of each other to get down the beach and into the water. We made a path for them to go down and we got to watch them make there way from their nest, down the beach and into the water. It was so cool and it was an amazing sight to see. One little guy got a bit off track and nearly bumped into Kirsty and I as he was making his way down the beach. Kirsty and I just wanted to pick him up and take him home with us.
14/2/2011
Today we left Bundaberg to travel south to a place called Rainbow Beach. This is where we will start our 4x4 driving adventure round Fraser Island.
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