Waterview Distillery

Samuel Johnston built a sawmill at Bundaberg in 1868, a sugar mill in 1876, and by 1892 a distillery on his Waterview estate to rival the rum already being made in town, until floodwater wiped it out in 1903. More than a century later, Matthew Drane revived the name on Hills Street in Bundaberg East, distilling cane juice into Black Snow, an agricole-style rum, and ageing spirit into Convict Brandy, both of which have since taken out World's Best titles in their categories alongside more than forty gold medals. A sister venture, Vintage Soda, supplies the ginger beer that turns up in the distillery's non-alcoholic range, made from Bundaberg-grown ginger. The cellar door opens daily, a straightforward tasting room rather than a polished visitor centre, in keeping with an operation more focused on rebuilding a nineteenth-century distilling lineage than on theatre. For a region known worldwide for one mass-market rum brand, it is a reminder that Bundaberg's distilling history runs deeper and stranger than that.