‘We bought 10 cases to take to Rocky’: Amazing family story behind Qld brand Bundaberg

You know you’re doing something right when you haven’t changed your recipe in more than 60 years. This is the story of the family business behind “the world’s great Australian brew”.

You’ve probably seen the ad.

You know the one? With the kindly old bearded man saying, “It’s a story that started with Mum, Dad, my wife and I …” before growing into an empire which became “the world’s great Australian brew” – Bundaberg Ginger Beer.

It’s a beautiful ad, full of images of Queensland’s rich landscapes and the fresh ingredients that go into every bottle of the beloved beverage which has maintained the same recipe for more than 60 years, but as you’d expect of a 30-second commercial, there are a few chapters missing.

Cliff Fleming.

Like the one where the empire almost came crashing down when it had barely even started, or the one where they faced a fierce threat from Bundaberg’s other famous export, or how it might not have ever been a story at all if someone in a dusty outback town hadn’t mentioned a lovely tasting fermented beverage being brewed in Bundaberg.

The story of Cliff Fleming – who was last month recognised as a member of the Order of Australia for his “significant service” to the Bundaberg community –starts a few decades earlier, when he arrived into the world in the Queensland town of Rockhampton.

Born in 1943 as the oldest of three children to parents Neville and Gladys, Fleming, who just turned 81 and remains as sharp as a tack, remembers moving to tiny Biloela at a young age and a childhood spent long before the advent of smartphones or video games.

In fact, he didn’t even have electricity.

Cliff Fleming as the original master brewer.

“Dad bought a business there and we had no electricity, so we’d wait for him to come home to start the generator so we’d have power and hot water for a bath,” he recalls.

Fleming and the other kids would build forts in the woods and pretend they were defending the Alamo.

Boys being boys, sometimes things went a bit too far, with a young Fleming ending up at the local cop shop after throwing another kid into a prickly pear cactus plant.

“He shot me with his air gun in the backside, so I chucked him into a prickly pear bush,” Fleming recalls.

“He went home with prickles all in his backside and I went home with this slug in me bum. Dad got me by the ear and took me down to the sergeant and the sergeant said, ‘Well, we’ll forgive you this time. You go home and do what your dad says.’”

The family moved back to Rocky when Fleming was 11 and he enrolled in a local school, but left at 14.

“I wanted to be a pharmacist, a chemist … (but) my results didn’t show that,” Fleming says.

“I was all right with maths, I was right with English, but the languages I just struggled with and dragged me down, so I just wanted to get out.

The early days of the brewery.

“And so Dad said, ‘If you can find a job you can leave’ and so I found myself a job.”

Fleming displayed a classic entrepreneurial spirit from a young age, taking on a variety of jobs before as a 17 year old going into business with his dad at a Rockhampton cafe.

That was effectively a side hustle as his main line of work was as a credit officer for a finance firm, driving around the state meeting clients.

It was on one of those trips along a dusty outback highway that Fleming was told about a fermented soft drink being made in Bundaberg “that was pretty good and we should try them”.

“Electra in Bundaberg was a small family business with three employees,” Fleming recalls. “They were making Bundaberg Ginger Beer so we bought 10 cases to take back to Rocky to sell at the cafe.”

Bundaberg Ginger Beer’s recipe hasn’t changed in more than 60 years.

Soft drink was a booming market.

Bundaberg alone had five soft drink factories in the 1960s and across Australia there were more than 300 brands when Fleming thought seriously about buying Electra in 1968.

So much competition might have been a deterrent, but Fleming remembers receiving some invaluable advice on a work trip to Darwin.

“He (a colleague) said to me, ‘There’s no best business – there’s the best operator’,” Fleming remembers.

“So that cleared it up in my mind that I was going into this business to be the best operator I could. And then it was a no-brainer.

“I joined with Mum and Dad and my wife (Lee) and myself to buy this little business.

“Actually, we were almost given the little business because the guy that then owned it, we had been his sole distributor of the drinks. He was just selling in Bundaberg and in the near area of Gin Gin and Childers and then to us up in Rockhampton.

“And so we’d spread it around the state.”

The original brewery.

While he had obvious hopes for success, Fleming didn’t think Bundaberg Ginger Beer would grow into the giant now sold in more than 60 countries around the world.

“I must admit I didn’t think it would go national,” he says.

“I thought we’d run up the Queensland coast, we’d run down around Brisbane and places like that.

“Certainly Coca-Cola had up to 70-80 per cent of the business then.”

And Coca-Cola almost certainly didn’t have the problem that the Fleming family soon ran into with Bundaberg Ginger Beer.

Up to 30 per cent of stock would be rejected for having unsightly growths form inside the bottles.

Anyone who’s ever tried to make their own batch of ginger beer at home knows how volatile the process can be. Losing three bottles out of 10 in a backyard batch is no great loss – but lose 300 out of 1000 and you’re in trouble.

So the Flemings found a German brewer in Sydney and invited him to Bundaberg to perfect the process. It meant a significant financial outlay and “tested the family right to the core”.

To be closer to the business, Fleming and Lee had bought a house in Bundaberg, as had his parents.

“We ran short of bucks and one of our houses had to sell,” says Fleming.

Cliff Fleming.

“So we decided it would be whoever’s house sold first, and fortunately, or unfortunately, it was Mum and Dad’s house.

“They rejigged our capital to the extent of $40,000 and that let us go on. They (Mum and Dad) moved to a flat and I’ll be forever thankful that they did this because it’s selling your heart to your business.

“After that, our business always flourished and we were able to finish up buying the flats for Mum and Dad.”

Fleming holds enormous respect and affection for his parents, who stepped away from the business in 1985. Neville Fleming died in 1992, while Gladys lived to the ripe old age of 98 and passed away in 2018.

“We had the best partnership you could ever imagine,” Fleming says.

“My mother was the greatest worker you could ever have. When she left, I replaced her with two and a half people.

“My dad, I only replaced him with one (but) he was a great sounding board.”

Expansion into New Zealand proved an instant success – much more successful than an early foray into Guam. Fleming made a deal with the local drink sales rep, but to say it didn’t last would be an understatement.

“I get home and I’m celebrating with the family that we’ve sold into Guam and I get a message from him (the rep) to say Coca-Cola will not allow me to distribute,” Fleming says.

International expansion since has been more successful.

Cliff Fleming with daughter-in-law Rae-Lee Fleming.

At the time of our chat, Bundaberg Brewed Drinks CEO John McLean (Fleming’s son-in-law, married to his daughter Rae-Lee) is in the United States meeting with executives of PepsiCo.

The group’s drinks are already widely sold in America as well as Europe and Asia.

Barring the odd hiccup here and there (a cyclone or two will do that to you) the business went from strength to strength.

But there was another challenge, which ironically came from just down the road, across town.

Most people would be familiar with Bundaberg’s other famous beverage and for decades the two businesses enjoyed an amicable relationship.

But in 2000, Bundaberg Rum was bought by international drinks giant Diageo and that’s when some nasty letters started turning up.

“When Diageo first took over, they contacted us saying that we used the Bundaberg name and they have the Bundaberg name and they wanted us out of here,” Fleming recalls.

“It was quite serious because they weren’t just letters from their offices.

“There were letters from their English solicitors and the world headquarters of the company. It was pretty big stuff so it was worrying. We had at that stage been 40-odd years with the Bundaberg logo and the colours we used and so I felt we had a good argument.

“But again, big companies moved people and once the marketing manager and sales manager were moved away and new people came in, new relationships were formed and we worked together and we negotiated with them, so it was give and take.

“We came to an agreement as two companies that we can live in this world together if we stay in our own lanes, I suppose.

The then Electra Breweries MD Cliff Fleming back in 1997.

“It was always based on, ‘We’re neighbours, let’s try and get along.’ It was quite a worrying time, but we are friends now.

“We’ve always supplied the ginger beer for them to demonstrate a dark and stormy to their customers (at the distillery).”

Throughout its sometimes dark and stormy history, the business has remained as much a fabric of the town of Bundaberg as the nearby sugar and ginger farms and with a massive $120m investment in a new, state-of-the-art facility which opened last year, they aren’t going anywhere.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese cuts the ribbon to open the new Thabeban super brewery with Cliff Fleming.

Fleming says it would probably be cheaper to move to a bigger centre, but it wasn’t on the cards.

“We did exercises to move to Brisbane and Sydney … you would think that freight would knock us around enormously and it does put a layer on the cost, but we still enjoy the opportunity to employ local people,” he says.

“And those local people, in my experience, would appear to be a good set of people to employ. We have had some wonderful employees. The business is successful because of our people.”

Bundaberg Brewed Drinks reportedly turned over $250m last year and now employs more than 250 people globally, though most of those positions are in the business’s spiritual home of Bundaberg.

Fleming himself stood down as chairman in 2018, but remains on the board and will stay there as long as he “can physically do it”.

Cliff Fleming with wife Lee, son Michael and daughter-in-law Belinda, Rae-Lee and son-in-law John McLean.

“The family have said to me: ‘Dad, you can retire whenever you want to as a board member, a decision maker, and you can come to every meeting as an observer and you can have some say to the directors who are then decision making,’” he says.

“I still enjoy the business very much (and) I’m so proud of my family taking an interest as well.”

That family interest is now on to its fourth generation, with Fleming’s granddaughter – Rae-Lee’s daughter Bronte, now working in international sales.

Rae-Lee, also a company director, proudly adds that Bronte, 26, has been invited to attend board meetings as an observer.

“Because it’s a family business, we understand the importance of continuity,” she says. “So as the generations are moving, we’re trying to make sure that everybody understands that this is still a family business.”

Cliff Fleming and Peter Beattie with their Draft Cola.

The slogan in the ad that Bundaberg Ginger Beer has become “the world’s great Australian brew” might seem a bit of a stretch, until you see people casually pulling out those distinctive amber bottles at a jazz festival in Chicago, or at a rooftop bar in an Asian metropolis.

Its success has become a symbol of enormous pride, not just for the people of Bundaberg, but for people all over Australia.

“It used to be just people from Bundaberg, people got a big buzz out of seeing it somewhere,” Fleming says.

“But now it’s everybody … any Australian will tell you the story of where they saw it, they send pictures to us, they will send texts and you just feel so proud that other people are getting a buzz out of it happening.”

Originally published as ‘We bought 10 cases to take to Rocky’: Amazing family story behind Qld brand Bundaberg