Deane & Jack's Motorcycle Trip in
Australia and New Zealand
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Deane & Jack's Motorcycle Trip in Australia and New Zealand |
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April 14 - Burnett Heads to Gympie, Queensland 264 km (164 Miles) |
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Today was the final day of riding, except to turn in the motorcycles at "Aussie Biker" tomorrow, so we made it just a day of letting our interest take us somewhere easy and short. We started with the town of Bundaberg, to go to a Rum Distillery bearing the label of "Bundaberg" Rum. We thought making Rum had something to do with all of the sugar cane we have talked about being produced in this area, and sure enough it did. So that's why we went to the Bundaberg distillery, to take a tour and see how rum was produced from sugar cane. In the process of the initial sugar cane processing, Molasses is produced, and that is the essential ingredient in rum. So a rum distillery has to be coupled with a sugar growing area. The molasses is produced from the cane only during the harvesting season for the cane, so the distillery has to take that molasses and store enough to process year-round. Consequently, the distillery has a tank with the capacity of about 5 million liters of molasses (it was used down to about 3 million liters right now), and about one liter of rum is produced for one liter of molasses. From there, the distillery is a big chemical plant. It was an interesting tour. And in the process, we found out the answer to the question I've been asking myself for the last many days as we rode through 500+ miles of cane fields. - What do they do with the cane after extracting the sugar from it? Surely, there must be thousands of tons of cane leftovers. The answer is - - They BURN it at the sugar processing plant to produce the energy for the plant and the extraction process!! On the way to the distillery, we went to the seacoast area at which Sea Turtles come to lay eggs and at which the little turtles are hatched, to run to for their lives as soon as they are hatched. This Turtle Rookery is run by the Australian government, and called the "Mon Repos Conservation Park". The Sea Turtles come to lay their eggs in November through February, and the little ones hatch and go to sea in January through April. The hatchlings were all gone by the time we came, but at least we now know where in the world these important events happen. This beach looks like any other, but its location and its sand apparently hold some beacon for the annual laying and hatching of the turtles.
While there, I took a picture of a pickup and its little pickup bed, because one sees these pickup beds everywhere in Australia. They are favored by fishermen, hunters, construction workers, and any one who needs to haul relatively small things that can be easily be reached. We've seen them so much it seems like every other pickup in Australia has a bed like this.
Oh yes, we also got really lost while trying to take the most convenient roads to hit the main highway after our excursion. Our GPS's had us going around in circles!! It was like the Bermuda Triangle, on land! We finally found our way, but not before we programmed and re-programmed the GPS units. Quite the exercise. |
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