Discover Bundaberg

Bundaberg combines insights into history and aviation with a rum distillery and expansive botanical gardens. This lets you shape your trip around different interests: learn about industrial processes, visit exhibitions or make time for trees, shrubs and lakes. Which of these experiences matters most to you may also influence your choice of a holiday rental or holiday home in Bundaberg.

Rum production and your own blends

The Bundaberg Rum Distillery Tour takes you through several stages of production. The program includes a museum visit, a molasses pit, fermentation, double distillation and a barrel store. The tour therefore offers an overview of different steps—from handling molasses to barrel ageing. If you’re especially interested in blending rum, the Blend Your Own Rum Experience offers a different kind of experience: visitors can create a personal blend and take home two personalised 700 ml bottles the same day. The two options have different focuses, from an overview of production processes to creating your own blend.

History, art and aviation

The Hinkler Hall of Aviation combines exhibitions with interactive features and flight simulators. Hinkler House adds a distinctive story about a building to your visit: the house was moved stone by stone from Southampton to Bundaberg in 1983 and now serves as a memorial museum. Together, the two places offer different ways to explore aviation and remembrance—one through exhibitions and simulations, the other through the relocated house as a museum.

Other museums also have their own focus. At the Fairymead House Sugar History Museum, you can explore the Indian bungalow architecture of a large plantation house. The Bundaberg and District Historical Museum features authentic period room displays, photographs, memorabilia and artefacts. The Bundaberg Regional Art Gallery, meanwhile, presents local exhibitions as well as touring exhibitions from across the state and the country in three exhibition spaces. If you’d like to focus your trip on art, everyday history or architecture, you can plan around these different themes.

Gardens, lakes and a short train ride

The Bundaberg Botanic Gardens cover more than 27 hectares and include more than 10,000 trees and shrubs. Their lakes provide a diverse habitat that attracts up to 114 bird species. Free admission makes the gardens a standalone way to include nature in your itinerary. If plants and birdlife are especially important to you, a visit here offers a different focus from a museum visit.

Another way to experience the gardens is on the Australian Sugar Cane Railway. It takes visitors on a 2 km ride through the Bundaberg Botanic Gardens and is suitable for people with disabilities and wheelchair users. So, as well as exploring the gardens on foot, you can see part of them on a train ride. Your planned interests may guide your accommodation choice: perhaps you’d like your trip to focus mainly on museums and exhibitions, or perhaps gardens and the railway ride are your priority.

If you’d like to discover more destinations: Moreton Island, Boyne Island, Eudlo, Traveston, Booie, Conondale, Sarina and Camoola.

For the main travel overview: Queensland.