CHAPTER 15 | 1914–1918 – World War 1
There were others who also came back from the war and returned to their farming lives. Hurtle Walker, who first worked at Auldana Cellars in 1904 at age 14, joined the 16th Battery Field Artillery in 1915. He served in France, where he won a DCM, MM, and Bar before he was invalided back to Adelaide. He went on to become one of the most important sparkling winemakers in the country, working first for Edmund Mazure and then Samuel Wynn at Romalo Cellars. The original yeast culture used in these wines had been brought to Australia by Leo Buring. There is a picture of Walker with a grape-picking crew of the 1904 vintage. Of the 10 boys photographed, only 4 returned from the war. Eric Hamilton of Hamilton Ewell and Frank Osborn, the son of d’Arenberg’s founder Joseph Osborn, survived the trauma and built thriving wine businesses based on exports to England. According to the Adelaide Advertiser on the 28th of August 1915, the McLaren Vale district ‘furnished quite a number of volunteers for active service at the front, namely, three nurses, one chaplain and 27 soldiers’ including vigneron Frank Osborn. ‘A silver poplar tree for each of the nurses, and an oak tree each for each of the men who enlisted’ was planted at McLaren Park. Frank Osborn’s Bundarra Vineyard, which was established in 1912, was worked by both family and local labourers, including hands from the Aboriginal community at Point Macleay, on Lake Alexandrina. Tom Mayfield Hardy went on to run his family company, Hardy’s, until his untimely death in the Kyeema aeroplane crash disaster of 1938. Emile Edward Mazure, Edmund’s son, served with the 14th/32nd infantry of the AIF. He distinguished himself by being caught selling wine illegally but was acquitted on a technicality. He was involved in trading more than five imperial gallons of wine, an offence that was not covered by the law. And Penfolds’ master blender, Albert ‘Alf’ Vesey’s son William George Vesey, a private, fought with the 27th Infantry Battalion before returning home. . . . John Francis Brown of Milawa Vineyard, also known as Brown Brothers, in northeast Victoria, had planted 40 acres of vineyards by 1909. Although demand for fortified wines had been steady for a long time, he had been persuaded by François de Castella of the Victorian Department of Agriculture to plant red table wine varieties, including shiraz and malbec. This advice was reaping dividends. The Wangaratta Chronicle of Wednesday the 28th of July 1915 reported that ‘Mssrs Brown Bros of Milawa Vineyard have been busy preparing a consignment of their well known wine for Messrs Burgoyne & Co of London. The shipment will consist of 100 hogsheads. It left Wangaratta Railway Station yesterday for Port Melbourne. Mssrs Brown Bros. have sent double this quantity in some years to the same firm.’
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