Reflecting on vine history

The young naval surgeon woke to the sounds of water lapping gently against the sides of the boat. It had been a peaceful evening for the tiny vessel's eight-man crew. First light suggested its gruelling passage along the southwest coast of Van Diemen's Land had reached a critical turning point.

The 30-foot Norfolk pine sloop had been the first boat to be built in New South Wales. 

Seventeen-year-old George Bass regarded it as barely fit for the journey it had begun from Port Jackson some five months earlier. Now – just a few days before Christmas 1798 – the expeditionary party being led by 24-year-old Lieutenant Matthew Flinders was drifting with the tide.

The men had resolved to sail the full length of the River Derwent, before setting a course for Sydney and completing their historic voyage of circumnavigation. 

Observations on the region's suitability for settlement would be eagerly anticipated on arrival. 

Within hours, Bass had added to his journal: 'Being a stiff close soil, it is perhaps adapted to the growth of grape vines rather than grain.'

The words reflect the remarkable insight of a Lincolnshire farmer's son. 

Bass had come to New South Wales barely three years earlier. His anticipation of a wine industry on the island that eventually would become known as Tasmania challenges the commonly held view that Australia's earliest pioneers had no regard for wine; that they preferred hard spirits, like rum and whisky.

Indeed, it seems likely that free settlers and commissioned ranks of the army and navy would have been quite accustomed to enjoying wine at the dinner table. 

The conventional upbringing of European gentry during the eighteenth-century plunged many of England's finest sons into wine's midst as they completed their grand tours of the Continent in the final phases of their education. In any given year, more than 40,000 Englishmen were likely to have been travelling through Europe on tours of its major cities.

The planting of vines in the new colony of New South Wales appears to have been given high priority after the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788. 

Apart from a general bid for agricultural self-sufficiency, it would have been a matter of necessity for anyone versed in wine back in England. The widespread use of fragile, hand-blown bottles made them prone to breakage for anyone willing to risk their wine's safe transit to Sydney during the four-month voyage.

Any attempts to make their wine's journey more secure would have imposed higher shipping costs.

Barrels of wine acquired in France, Spain or South Africa were frequently adversely affected by their rough passage aboard ship. Long periods of time spent crossing equatorial waters – or riding the boisterous waves of the southern oceans – would result in bulk wine arriving in Sydney in very poor condition, their contents spoiled by oxidation. 

Spirits and fortified wines – like port, sherry and madeira – were far more robust and durable under such sailing conditions.

The desire to establish a homegrown supply of wine soon extended to the highest echelons of colonial society. In late 1788, Governor Arthur Phillip supervised the planting of some 8,000 vines at Government House in Parramatta. Historical records of life in New South Wales show that by 1792 there were also vineyards at Prospect Hill and on Norfolk Island.

Among the onlookers of this emerging new industry was the irrepressible Watkin Tench. 

The young marine captain wrote the first book giving a factual account of life at Sydney Cove. Published in London in 1789, his text shrewdly observed that 'the grapes of New South Wales will in a few years equal that of any other country. That their juice will probably hereafter furnish an indispensable article of luxury at European tables.'

In 1800, two French prisoners of war named Antoine Landrien and Francois de Riveau were despatched to Sydney to promote viticulture in the settlement, and to advise a new governor on planting vines and making wine.

The first reports of any kind of wine being made in Van Diemen's Land emerged in 1821. Newspaper articles made references to raspberry and currant wines being offered for sale. Hobart Town was then less than two decades old. 

Much of the island still remained unexplored, except for a scattering of settlements along the Tamar and Derwent rivers, and on the rough bush tracks that connected these colonial outposts. In total, there were no more than 7,500 settlers present.

Ships carrying human and more utilitarian cargoes were documented in detail in the colony's newspapers. 

On January 10th, 1820, Hobart Town woke to find HMS Dromedary in its fine harbour. Sailing under the direction of Captain Richard Skinner, the vessel had set out from London in September of 1819 with 370 male convicts on board. Among those to disembark after a journey of 121 days was 35 year-old Bartholomew Broughton, a gentleman of London.

Broughton had been convicted of embezzlement and theft. He had been fortunate to have his death sentence commuted to seven years' transportation to New South Wales. 

Little is known of the ex-naval officer, but he was clearly a man with good connections in the colony.

Within months, he appears to have had his status elevated to that of a convict on assignment, enabling him to take up work with citizens acknowledged as free settlers. By 1821, he enjoyed considerable freedom of movement in Van Diemen's Land, becoming attached to the Naval Office after a period of self-employment as the owner of a general store in Liverpool Street.

In 1823, Broughton purchased a large property at New Town from Alfred Luttrell, son of Colonial Surgeon Edward Luttrell. Known as Prospect Farm, the 150-acre site included an assortment of fruit trees and grape varieties. Three years later, its vineyard produced 300 gallons of wine 'made in imitation of Champaigne.'

It remains unclear where and how the property had acquired its vineyard planting material. 

Certainly, the island had already witnessed the importation of vine cuttings from Sydney Cove and from vineyards overseas. Government Garden had been established on the present-day site of Hobart's Domain in 1818. Grape vines were soon under cultivation there. 

A small vineyard existed at Port Arthur. 

A Doctor Murdoch of Paradise Farm is known to have had significant plantings of Pinot Noir – then called Black Cluster – growing at Risdon Creek.

Regardless of their origins – and the viticultural practices that brought them to fruition – Broughton's vines bore wine grapes of considerable quality. A report of a public tasting of wine produced from them gained valuable column space in the Colonial Times during 1827.

The newspaper noted it was 'little inferior to Champaigne.' Pundits compared it favourably with the gold medal winning wines being produced at Parramatta by Gregory Blaxland.

Sadly, Broughton had little opportunity to enjoy his wine's remarkable fame and fortune.

Within 18 months, he was dead, a hapless victim of tuberculosis. 

Prospect Farm would then find itself a new owner, a sea captain by the name of Charles Swanston who in turn would help found Melbourne in the decade ahead.  

Viticulture was by no means the exclusive realm of pioneering settlers in the Derwent Valley. 

In the Coal River Valley beyond Richmond – not far from 21st century icon Domaine A Stoney Vineyard – Lieutenant George Weston Gunning of the 73rd Regiment established a thriving farming operation on land granted to him in 1810. 

By the time it was offered for sale in April 1828, his Campania property boasted no less than three acres of orchards and vineyards. Vines there bore some 2,000 pounds of wine grapes, 'fully ripened and awaiting harvest.'

During the 1820s, wine-growing also established itself in the north of the island. 

William Lawrence grew grapes on a two-acre vineyard at West Launceston. But it was short-lived. Neighbours disgruntled by its encroachment on their land soon petitioned Lieutenant-Governor William Sorell. In 1823, Lawrence was forced to move to Windmill Hill, denying him a chance to make the Tamar Valley's first wine.

More successful was a venture at Marchington, Breadalbane, 'six miles from Launceston,' according to a newspaper of the period. It was located not far from Relbia, where a handful of vineyards are located today. The district was then known as Cocked Hat Hill. 

Somewhere around 1828, farmer John Smith improved his landholding at Breadalbane with 200 grapevines and cuttings. They had arrived on the Albion the year before, and had been conveyed to Marchington by Smith's friend, William Davidson. 

Davidson became the first superintendent of Hobart's Botanic Gardens

The vineyard at Marchington preceded by almost 15 years much larger plantings by Dr Matthias Gaunt at Windermere (on the East Tamar), and those at the enigmatic Enstone Park, near Falmouth on the East Coast. 

Not only did Smith's vines seem to provide reliable harvests of premium wine grapes, cuttings taken there each winter enabled viticulture to be spread beyond the shores of Van Diemen's Land itself. 

By 1842, Marchington was producing 5 tons of wine grapes a year. Newspaper reports proclaimed the vineyard as 'one of the finest on the island.'

Captain Charles Swanston, meanwhile, had also expanded his vineyard at Prospect Farm. He too sent cuttings to Victoria and South Australia. It appears the planting material helped complement the efforts of Edward Henty and John Reynell in establishing two of Australia's pre-eminent wine States  – Victoria and South Australia.

It is widely reported today that in 1848, Swanston's New Town site won the tiny colony its first international wine award at the Paris Exhibition. (This writer is not convinced, however, due to lack of credible evidence to support the claims.)

Vintage in 1848 produced 1,600 gallons of Prospect Farm wine, some of which was auctioned at the beginning of November. Two-year-old sparkling 'Tasmanian champagne' fetched 40 shillings a dozen, and whet appetites for the quantities of pink champagne and claret that would be offered for sale in another three months' time.

Just weeks short of the fiftieth anniversary of Bass's prophetic notes recorded aboard the Norfolk, it appeared that viticulture in Tasmania would be swept along by waves of popular acclaim. 

Nothing could be further from the truth. While several dozen bottles of Swanston's prized 'sparkling champagne' may have survived his century to be uncovered at Wendover House in the next century (pictured above), the days of Prospect Farm and other vineyards in the colony would be numbered.

In 1850, the once-wealthy Swanston died a ruined man, a victim of the financial collapse of the Derwent Bank. 

Wine production on his property at New Town – so diligently managed in the past by its vignerons – soon came to an abrupt end. 

The estate's subsequent owner – former mayor of Hobart, William Carter – showed little interest in viticulture. There is no recorded evidence of wine ever again being made at Prospect Farm after Swanston's death.

An exodus of labour and capital to Victoria's goldfields in the 1850s helped ensure the potential flood of wine from the island's vineyards became nothing more than a tiny trickle. 

Another 100 years would pass before hands that tended vines received genuine remuneration for their efforts. Aborted 19th century attempts by Diego Bernacchi at Darlington (on Maria Island) – and by Jean Miguet this century (at Lalla)  – would ultimately frustrate the immigrant pair. 

But the die had been cast by earlier visionaries.

Noteworthy wines from Black Cluster would be called Pinot Noir in the 20th and 21st centuries. 

They would still be handcrafted from grapes grown on meticulously managed vines. 

Tasmanian 'champagne' would lose its French-designation, but not its lustre. Its wine quality would draw attention to the State as a prime location for the production of traditional method, cool-climate sparkling.

Regions that showed promise in the 19th century are finally beginning to realise their potential in the present century. The Derwent Valley, Coal River Valley, Tamar Valley and the East Coast are all well on their way to achieving international recognition. The successes attributed to sites at Pipers Brook and in the Huon Valley can be regarded as bonuses of considerable proportion.

Allow cool-climate viticulture the benefit of another century of evolution and who could predict what the industry's greatest achievements might be?

After all, as 20th century wine pioneer Graham Wiltshire dryly observes, "Tasmania's best vineyards haven't even been planted yet."

First published July 2006: Tasmania 40 SOUTH, Issue 29

Last page update: 31 August 2026