Bundaberg – arguably missable; rum from a dark Satanic mill; cane for the pain: spook and diesel; 1770 and Agnes Waters; 8 hours to Airlie Beach; Flaggy Rock – best pies on the planet; Tracy saves the day; ZigZag Whitsundays Day Tour – best beach in the world; Sorrento sundowners and dinner at The Rocks

The main reason to stay at Seventeen Seventy / 1770 or its immediate neighbour Agnes Waters – another memorable name, if not place – is that it’s a three-hour drive from Hervey Bay when heading north to Cairns. And a three-hour stint is, in my opinion, the perfect amount of driving time; four hours is OK, too. Anything longer becomes tiresome.

Bundaberg – arguably missable

First, though, we stopped at  Bundaberg – a possibly missable town, gently decaying, much like Marlborough. Lauded by the tourism site (just doing its job, I suppose) for its gracious and elegant civic buildings, it revealed instead a sad and scruffy CBD, with even the Grand Hotel simply “closed”.  Roy hunted down a cup of coffee at the Royal Café, which was doing reasonable business.

But unmissable in the sense that if we’d not gone there, I would always have wondered what Bundaberg was like.

A Rum Do

And, of course, we had to find “The Famous” Bundaberg Rum Distillery.Google Maps first took us to this impressively dark Satanic mill; but that’s just where they turn the sugar cane into rum; the glossy visitor centre is around the corner. Being glossy visitors, we made our way there.

Having had such a wonderful tour and tasting a week or two ago at Beenleigh Rum Distillery on the Gold Coast with Max and Trevor, we felt no need to do the tour here. Ardent shopper that he is, Roy did try to buy a shirt in the souvenir shop – but in vain.

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Side note: Cane for the pain, spook and diesel

The ubiquitous sugar cane reminded me of KwaZulu-Natal, and of Mauritius, and of rum.

In KZN, however, we turn our sugar cane into a tasteless, vodka-like white spirit properly called “cane spirit”, but more usually “cane”. Hence the lyrical expression “cane for the pain”. Mixed with Coke, it becomes spook and diesel. Mixed with sickly green Sparletta cream soda, it’s aptly known as a green mamba. (Mambas are highly venomous snakes.)

South Africans of my generation will remember those super-aspirational movie commercials for Mainstay cane, featuring gorgeously bronzed men and women surfing, yachting (and of course drinking white spirits) in glamorous hot-spots all over the world from Cannes to California, and from Bondi Beach to the Bahamas. They were up there with the Peter Stuyvesant ads.

The Mainstay slogan?

“You can stay as you are for the rest of your life… or you can change to Mainstay (Mainstay)”

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1770 and Agnes Waters

The beachside community of Seventeen Seventy, usually written as 1770 –  or called the Town of 1770, had a population of just 69 souls at the 2016 census count.

Why 1770? Well, it’s built on the site of the second Australia landing of James Cook and the crew of HM Bark Endeavour in May 1770.

Review: 1770 Lagoons Central Apartment Resort

Our 51-square metre Executive King Studio had not only a garden view, a washing machine and a dishwasher, but a spa bath on its balcony – one of my happier choices, and great value at $154 for the night.

And it’s very good accommodation, by the way, all new or refurbished, with the rooms surrounding a Bali-style pool and courtyard – pity we’re only here for one night.  The restaurant looked good, too.

I snuck in a quick sunset walk on Agnes Waters’ long stretch of beach – there’s access to it through the dunes, about a ten minute walk from the resort.

Dinner and drinks

The sweet young thing at 1770 Lagoons reception recommended dinner at Codie’s Place, but predicted it would be full as it had live music tonight – and so it proved.

Instead, we drove up the 1770 peninsula to the marina, just too late to catch the sunset, but still in time for grilled Spanish mackerel from the Rusty Pelican and a drink from Katrina’s Bar, opposite.

We’re now officially sick of grilled fish, salad and chips – especially Roy, who limits himself to three chips. Happily, four pelicans were milling around the marina in the twilight. A wonderful bird is the pelican!

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8 hours from Agnes Waters to Airlie Beach

We do our best to limit the number of hours on the road – it’s supposed to be fun, after all. But sometimes it doesn’t work out that way. Sometimes you’re faced with 800km and eight solid hours of driving. It wasn’t the easiest of driving, either, with numerous hold-ups for roadworks.

Queensland drivers are noticeably less law-abiding than Western Australians, where everyone drives exactly at the speed limit, and road signs dourly and exclamatorily remind you that “Over is Over!”.  Fingers crossed that we don’t come home to speeding fines – or, worse, points on our brand new and heretofore unsullied WA driving licences.

Best pies on the planet?

I took the first driving stint, Roy the next one, and we fairly shared the remaining distance. That way, it was comfortably doable. Lunch was at Flaggy Rock Café at Carmila, directly on the Bruce Highway, which, like many other establishments we’ve come across on our travels, sells the best pies on the planet.

I’d been dreaming about pies for the past few days – we’re on holiday, after all. (And Australia is Pie Country.) A chunky steak pie for me, washed down with sickly sweet Bundaberg ginger beer just so there’s no misunderstanding that this is a seriously aberrant lunch. And for Roy, a delicious corned beef pie.

Flaggy Rock Café has lovely garden surroundings and plenty of parking. It’s a good spot to stop on a road we’d falsely been warned had nothing to offer north of Rockhampton.

Airlie Beach… at last

Review: Whitsunday Waterfront Apartments

This was the ideal location – right on Cannonvale Beach. It’s an older block. The front-facing units have superb views of the Whitsunday islands. Ours did not; but it did have 70 square metres, two bedrooms and a balcony with a garden view. (Again, good value at $370 for two nights.)

Top marks to Tracy, who runs the place with her husband, Michael. She saved the day. En route to Airlie Beach, I realised I hadn’t yet booked the Whitsundays cruise that was our main reason for coming to Airlie Beach – and tomorrow, Saturday, was the only day we could fit it in.

So, while Roy was driving, I found a ZigZag Whitsundays Day Tour online and sent Tracy a message via booking.com. She did the booking for me, bless her.

Lest you judge me for not pre-booking this way ahead of time, the weather forecast had been horrible. As it turned out, we had blue skies all the way with highs of around 24 degrees Centigrade – typical Northern Queensland winter weather and much like my home town, Durban.

Full-day Whitsundays Tour – with Zig Zag Whitsundays Day Tour.

Our day on the boat started off teeth-chatteringly chilly, but turned out spectacular.

Whitsunday Island is the largest of this group of islands, and its Whitehaven Beach – over 7km of squeaky, 98 percent silica powder – was recently voted the best beach in the world. It’s accessible only by boat, seaplane or helicopter.

Getting there took an hour and a half, while we all shivered in the southerly breeze. It began with a half-hour ride to Long Island’s Palm Bay Resort to pick up several passengers, including one couple from Adelaide and another from Mandurah, who had nothing but the highest praise for the resort and its Balinese-inspired villas. (We would be dropping them off later on our way back to Airlie, with half-an-hour to enjoy a drink that the crew pre-ordered for us.)

Speaking of the crew, Sam, Jordan and skipper Max do a fantastic job.

Next up was a 45-minute stop for snorkelling, where most of our fellow-passengers went into the water in spite of the cold. Only one of the 8-strong Chinese cohort stayed on board, as did Roy and I and our new friend Deb Lawler.

It was a matter of enduring the chilly wait; but once ashore on Whitehaven Beach, we quickly began to thaw and all was forgiven.

Before you can enjoy your picnic lunch, you have to fend off not only the crows, but also a proliferation of goannas (the generic Oz term for iguanas), one of which made off with some food foraged from a fellow-passengers bag left unattended on the beach.

After lunch came an opportunity to do a nature walk to a lookout with a 360-degree view. At the top, crew membr Jordan kindly showed me how to use the Pano function on my phone. (My life is changed forever.)

Sorrento sundowners

Dinner that evening with Deb at The Rocks restaurant at her hotel, Coral Sea Resort, was excellent. I remember oysters, cured fish and sashimi; duck confit with veggies; affogatos with double shots of both espresso and Cointreau. The next day’s hangovers were well earned.

Oh yes – I now recall that it proved impossible to get a cab back, so we eventually had to walk the 30 minutes to our accommodation. Fortunately, we were feeling no pain.

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Next up, two nights in Townsville!