THE AUSTRALIAN ARK – Federation to the Modern Era | 1900–1982
THE FRANCISCANS A new local Mornington Peninsula wine industry of sorts was established in the 1930s by a group of Franciscan brothers. They established a monastery and a boys home at Mount Eliza in 1933 on a beautiful estate running down to Port Phillip Bay. The old mansion, named Sunnyside, was built by Francis Gillet, a wealthy Englishman, but renamed Morning Star Boy’s Training Farm for delinquent boys between the ages of 14 and 18. The purpose of the school was ‘to train the boys in farming pursuits, so that they would be useful citizens’. By 1935, the community had already ‘erected four miles of rabbit fencing, manured 80 acres of land and sowed 40 acres’. In addition, the boys were ‘trained in pig and poultry raising and in gardening’. During the late 1930s, the brothers planted a 2.5-acre block of pinot noir, shiraz, and cabernet sauvignon, probably with the intent of making it for their own consumption or for altar wine. This vineyard, which was greatly expanded and was still surviving in 2020, represented the oldest commercial plantings on the Mornington Peninsula. Although there are reports that the Franciscans brought vinestock with them from France, this is highly unlikely, considering the wide availability of these grape varieties in Victoria at the time. The 156-acre Morning Star Estate, for many years a private hotel and events centre, is one of the very few properties that endured the various carve-ups of land since the early 1860s. Once again in private hands, Morning Star’s wine story will probably fade into history.
Vittorio and Giusseppina De Bortoli in front of their truck. Behind them are the winery and house in Bilbul, New South Wales. [De Bortoli Collection]
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