PREHISTORY The people indigenous to the region were the Woiwurrong. A skull found in the Keilor Valley was dated as c.10,000-150,000 years old. We can see traces of their seasonal movements across their domain in the cooking pits or scarred trees. Many died as a result of contact with the early European settlers, and the sometimes-vigorous competition for the land and water supplies. The remainder were taken away to protected settlements, which in turn came under pressure from nearby landholders, and were closed, leaving only Coranderrk near Healesville and Lake Tyers in Gippsland. The original soils were clay. During the volcanic age, gas and hot ash exploded from some vents, and others oozed the molten lava that filled valleys and rivers, crept slowly across the landscape, or spread in sheets across the plains. When it cooled the landscape was coated with sheets of stone, or the fertile soil that is deep and rich, and produced native grasses and orchids, shrubs, vines and trees. This soil also produced heavy crops for the first European settlers.

From the 1790s to the 1850s economic and social change across Europe encouraged the venturesome to rush to Victoria – in the hopes of grabbing land, or to try their luck on the goldfields. On the road to Bendigo they walked through Keilor, The Gap, Diggers Rest. Digging for gold was hard work, living quarters basic, good food scarce and expensive, accidents happened. Their Miners Right permitted them to own a small block of land, but many hankered for the pastoral land to be made available for farming.

The 1862 Land Act encouraged goldseekers to settle on small properties, and to explore the growing of food crops. Its novel industries clause specified 30-acre leases (and a later right to purchase) outside the proclaimed agricultural areas for yeomen farmers to grow diverse crops to support the population that had greatly increased through the gold rushes. Among tobacco, olives, oranges, hops, cider apples almonds, peaches, mustard, mulberries/silkworms, sorghum, hemp, flax and cotton, vine planting became a favourite – 62 applicants within the first year, and some were experienced vignerons (Swiss and French). The Colonial Exhibition of 1861 had already featured 29 wine exhibitors from Geelong and Melbourne, Upper Yarra, Albury, Ballarat and Castlemaine.

The Intercolonial Exhibition of 1866 featured the wine of Victoria, NSW and SA. Here, the medals awarded to wines of the Sunbury region showed that wine could be grown south of the divide. At these local exhibitions producers could measure their wine against others in the colonies, and therefore ascertain the worth of sending their wine ‘home’ for judgment in Paris or Vienna (there in 1873 the judges were so impressed with the standard of Australian wines that they created a special diploma of honour).

The delight that gentlemen found in cultivating their vines can be seen in the words of Charles Maplestone, an architect who emigrated in 1853 to the goldfields, and for the Victorian Public Works Department designed many lighthouses, and lived in Heidelberg. “I know of no sight calculated to call forth gratitude to God for the bounties of His providence than the rich clusters of the luscious fruit and the beautiful foliage of the vine.” By 1860 he had a nursery of 7000 cuttings, and wrote to friends in England that “Victoria is destined to be a great wine growing country,” and promised to send them a bottle of Ivanhoe wine. His 1868 vintage produced 800 gallons of wine, 150 gallons of small wine (a vin ordinaire).

His son Harry became manager at Craiglee for politician winegrower, James Stewart Johnston, the Commissioner of Public Works. Sunbury had renown as the 12,7000 ha country seat of W.J.T. ‘Big’ Clarke extending from Macedon Ranges to Sunbury. (In 1874 his son, William built the 50-room mansion Rupertswood. He accompanied the English cricket team to Australia following the infamous game where cricket ‘died’ when Australia was victorious over the mother country.)

When the Bendigo railway was built as far as the Sunbury district, the population swelled with professional, political and commercial men who built a splendid home and demesne, and thought that viticulture would balance their busy lives. From 45 acres under vines in 1860, Sunbury’s crop grew to 328 in 1870-1.

James Stewart Johnstone lived at Craiglee from 1866-1872, building a fine home and 3-storey cellar on Jackson’s Creek, before returning to St Kilda, leaving Craiglee in the hands of his younger sons.

Across the creek was John Eadie’s Beneadie Vineyard, and R.S. Anderson’s Springvale Vineyard and cellars.

Nearby, on the steeper slopes, J.G. Francis, a wealthy merchant and acute politician, built Goona Warra, a fine bluestone home and winery.

“The vineyard occupies a somewhat narrow strip of land extending along the creek for some distance, the vines extending from the water’s edge well up towards the crown of the sloping banks. Its appearance is exceedingly beautiful, so that from the residence a charming view is obtained of the vine clad slopes and the waving line of water.”

He planted Burgundian varieties on stone terraces on the steep slopes of Jackson's Creek and constructed the homestead, bluestone winery and stables without sparing expense. His premature death in 1884, coupled with the demise of Victoria's pre-eminence in winemaking in the 1880's saw the vines pulled out. The vineyard was re-established in 1983.

By 1867 the Swiss vice-consul Bischoff estimated 1500 French-Swiss winegrowers living in Victoria, and their application to the soil across early Melbourne is clear in David Dunstan’s Better than Pommard! 1994.

There were other such properties, and the men travelled the same trains for an hour to Melbourne. As they grew older, a distinct class of vineyard managers and lessees grew up in Sunbury, many agriculturalists of European origin. Smallholders, winemakers, food producers and bakers, they knew how to grow plants in hard soil or a cold climate.

“The system employed by M. Baldini is to throw all the grapes as they are gathered into one of the fermenting vats and leave them until the marc rises. Sometimes this takes place in forty-eight hours, sometimes not for a week, as the weather may be cold or warm, or the grapes wet or dry when they are gathered. The critical change is announced by an altered smell arising from the vat, and when the proper time comes, be it night or day, the must is at once run off, and the marc taken to the press.”

In 1867 Eugene von Guerard (a Swiss painter who had been on the goldfields) painted Mr Clark’s mansion at Deep Creek, Glenara at Bulla – and that weatherboard house has a remnant stone winery.

In 1846, Madame Daniel and her five sons planted vines and fruit trees on their Bulla property Narbonne. Within sight of this planting, 150 years later, the Stott family planted their first 3ha of chardonnay vines on the terra rossa in a frost-free maritime climate

In what is now Diggers Rest the volcanic cone known as Bald Hill became George Knight’s vine-covered slopes. A railway engineer who worked on the Bendigo line through Sunbury and built the impressive bluestone viaduct over Jackson’s Creek, he worked at his horticulture both in Vineyard Road and at Riddell’s Creek, where “the soil requires moisture and the effects of a dry summer soon become apparent.” He moved on to Bendigo.

In 1869, also at Vineyard Road, James Blake took on Winilba, with shallow soil high on the hill, and the property was worked by a number of owners. Neighbours were Felix Bubeck at Schlossberg Vineyard, and R. F. Kurrle’s Rosenthal Vineyard at the foot of the hill.

By 1870 the Sunbury District had 190 acres around Bald Hill (Diggers Rest) and 110 along Jackson’s Creek (Sunbury). The annual yield was low at 30,000 gallons due to the low rainfall and dry summer soils. Good wine was made, most favouring the hermitage; many enjoyed them, feeling these were like French wines, the dry climate and volcanic soil encouraging ‘very fine qualities’.

The Craiglee Hermitage was a great success in Vienna 1873 and at the 1880-1 Exhibition in Melbourne; being considered so good that it should have been put up against the best French wines.

The climate in southern Australia was similar to the premium wine-growing areas of Europe. There were high hopes that Australia would “take its rightful place among the first wine-producing countries of the world.” Many grape plantings were varieties already known in Europe, as the smallholders had brought with them what was familiar. However, during the 1880s a drought tested the tenacity of the owners, and as the gentlemen vignerons aged, the vines were less well tended by lessees, and yields were declining. By 1890 the energy had moved to the greater Bendigo district where there were 500 hectares in vines.

It’s not clear what early grapes were planted in the Melton district which was pastoral, and provided services both for the pastoralists and for those travelling to the goldfields.

A typical early successful man’s property is that of Simon Staughton who came in 1841 to Melbourne and took up a run from Brisbane Ranges to Exford, from the Werribee River (Exe) near its junction with the Toolern, to the Little River.
The house was built of pise de terre (rammed earth) within a framework of 8 tree trunks placed in the corners and framing the 2 doorways. The ground floor was an entry and five modest rooms. Upstairs under the shingle roof, three attic rooms. Perhaps the first 2-storied house outside Melbourne. Below ground was a large bluestone-lined cellar, and in one wall, a sturdy door guarding a safe. A detached kitchen was built of pise too. Nearby were 2 guest cottages. There was a smithy and a coachhouse, and a Gothic-style gardener’s residence, and the 3-acre garden rolled down to the river.
Staughton built up property in Melbourne and on the Darling, was involved with banking, owned a house in Melbourne, and was one of Victoria’s most successful squatters. But did he drink his own wine?

Were grapes planted for the bluestone inn and stables at Rockbank owned by Stewart and Brown, designed in 1853 by Charles Laing and built by John Atkinson, a Port Fairy stonemason. Stewart was a Melbourne wine merchant. Brown moved on to the Inverness Hotel at Deep Creek, Bulla.

The Rockbank Inn was said to have been “associated with the movement of diggers to the goldfields, and of the troops (12th and 40th Foot and Gun parties from HMS Electra and Fantome), moving with Sir Robert Nickle to quell the Eureka uprising.”
The inn had a pet magpie which shouted as a coach moved off, “Goodbye old boys… goodbye old boys!”

It was a meeting place for sportsmen. A group of local enthusiasts kept hounds and hunted foxes supplied by Pyke of Pennyroyal Creek (Melton), or Dave Murphy from Big Clarke’s Rockbank run. Many also released rabbits. Hunting has continued in this district. Horse racing meetings were held on the south side of Kororoit Creek.

In 1856 Melton was a postal village, the centre of a pastoral district.
In 1865 the Melton Road Board district had an estimated area of 73,000 acres, a population of 1000 persons and 212 people.

Sources:
David Dunstan, Better than Pommard! A history of wine in Victoria, Australian Scholarly Publishing 1994
Joan Starr, Melton, plains of promise, Melton Shire Council