Yo, ho ho! – and a bottle of rum; Gold Coast in mid-winter – not too shabby; seagulls at Surfers Paradise; terrific lunch at Tropic;  Tommy Bahama, sashimi and sushi; new jacket – spoiler alert!

“Let’s take a drive to Gold Coast for lunch today, maybe stopping at a small rum distillery on the way,” said  our Brisbane friends Max and Trevor. Yes, please!

Located south of Brisbane and surrounded by sugarcane plantations, a place like Beenleigh Artisan Rum Distillery completely spoils you for the far bigger and slicker operation at Bundaberg, not too far away. Being artisanal, the rum they produce here is utterly delicious – even at the lower end of the price and age scale.

We opted for the tour and tasing, at $25 a head. It’s supposed to be an hour long, but we took more than that; no problem, we were the only visitors.

First came the tour, with Logan – a lass with vocal cords of steel that cut through the machinery noise. Just three men do most of the rum-making here, and they seem to work in mysterious ways.

Photography isn’t allowed in the distillery (the holy of holies); something to do with fire prevention, was the lame explanation – and it was clear that information flow to Logan from the Three Wise Men was on a strictly need-to-know basis. (Today, for the first time, and to her unfeigned surprise, they were experimenting with making beer and whisky.)

Floods are a perennial threat to the distillery, and disaster has struck several times during Beenleigh’s history. From an upstairs window of the heritage-listed big red shed, you can see the  Albert River far below, now meandering mildly about its business.

It all started in 1888, and Beenleigh is today Australia’s oldest operational distillery. It uses only Queensland molasses – Queensland produces 95% of the country’s sugar, as I shall probably expound on at more length in my future posts – and it ages its rum in brandy maturation vats and American oak casks to lend a distinctive flavour.

Two tasting options are offered: the Classic experience, here:

and the Distiller’s Selection, here:

We clearly enjoyed the stuff, because here’s the beaming Roy happily forking out for several bottles. (Logan not only was our guide, but runs the shop – and brews up a very acceptable flat white.)

Gold Coast

Brisbane being on a river, for a beach fix you need to go either north to the Sunshine Coast or south to the Gold Coast. As we’d be driving north in a few days’ time, all the way to Cairns (pronouced Kenz, if you want to be understood by an Australian), lunch on the Gold Coast was a great idea.

A lot of glossy real estate lines the road south; many Brisbanites have a beachside holiday house or apartment. Most of it is low-rise, to the credit of the planning authorities; but it’s another story when you get to the hub of the Gold Coast: Surfers Paradise. According to one tourism website, this high-rise enclave welcomes 20,000 visitors a day. (Or used to do so in the BP* era.)

• Before the Plague

I may be a beach girl, but it has to be summer. Trevor seemed to expect me to go for a paddle (he’s English, you understand); but no, thank you – I was quite content to enjoy the stirring views of the wild Pacific from the expansive terrace of Tropic at Burleigh Pavilion. And the lunch was superb!

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On the way home, Trevor drew up at the Gold Coast Fishermen’s Co-op. We were too late to buy fresh fish from one of the boats.

Thwarted of a fish dinner, Roy would not rest until he’d hunted down some salmon sashimi and eel sushi for lunch the next day at DFO. That was shortly after acquiring a new jacket at Tommy Bahama, which no doubt will feature in the next episode of this blog. Stay tuned!