Bundy rum, Mon Repos turtles and the southern Great Barrier Reef gateway on the Burnett River
Bundaberg sits on the Burnett River in Queensland's sugarcane belt, famous for the Bundaberg Rum Distillery, the Mon Repos turtle rookery where loggerhead turtles nest November–March, and access to the Southern Great Barrier Reef. Lady Musgrave Island — a coral cay inside a lagoon — is a short ferry ride away.
The Bundaberg region was home to the Taribelang Bunda and Gurang Gurang peoples for thousands of years before European settlement in the 1840s. The discovery of the region's extraordinary sugar-growing potential in the 1860s brought an influx of South Sea Islander indentured labourers — a dark chapter of Queensland's colonial history — and established the sugarcane industry that still defines the region. The Bundaberg Rum Distillery opened in 1888 using molasses from the sugar refining process.