Saturday 15 November 2008

We have Rum

Other than the marina and the beach, there is little else so close to the coast. The town of Bundaberg is 20 kilometres inland (sorry you Imperial folks, Australia is completely metric) .

Confession time here, I was not aware of Bundaberg when I lived in UK. But it is quite a substantial town and is (at least in Australasia and the Pacific) famous for its Rum and its Ginger Beer.

Both the Rum Factory and the Ginger Beer Plant have visitor centres and when the chance came up, we called in to see the rum factory. The tour of the factory is involves a guide and a fair bit of time, however, the museum is open to the casual visitor, so we opted for that as a starter.


Then made just a quick call on the Ginger Beer visitor centre. We loved its appearance, barrel-like as you can see.
The old delivery lorry is in a custom glass display garage adjacent to the centre.



Monday 3 November 2008

We have Pelicans

We have a slip on the outside rank of the marina, nearest to the mouth of the estuary. It may be further to walk to the office, but we get a fresh breeze and we don't suffer from the noise that must be expected from the restaurant, bar and the general areas that people congregate. In fact just a hundred metres or so across the water is a tiny beach, which families and fishermen use - in small numbers.

We walked to the beach one day and surrounding the fishermen were pelicans, larger than we have been used to in the Caribbean, but with the same agenda ...fish.

Sunday 2 November 2008

We have kangaroos

We have Kangaroos...

A friend from another yacht said that she had seen wild kangaroos near to the woods that lie to the south of the marina.
Apparently late afternoon is prime time to spot them, so armed with binoculars and cameras, we went for a forage.
They weren't hard to see. A whole troop or 'mob' were out in the open.
They had seen us first and virtually every eye was on us, ears twitching independently of each other like radar scanners. We stayed very still, and after a while, they resumed their task of grass consumption, with just a reduced lookout.