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New England Australia – Eastview Estate Winery

January 27th, 2010 · Australia Audio Guides, Free Audio Guides

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Eastview Estate Cellar Door and Restaurant

Eastview Estate Cellar Door and Restaurant

Just a short distance off the New England Hwy, about 10kms south of Uralla on the Northern Tablelands of New England Australia, is the small village of Kentucky. Once a significant fruit growing area, developed by the World War I veterans who struggled to develop their rehab blocks after the war, Kentucky Australia is a re-emerging rural area with some exciting developments.

I visited Eastview Estate Winery and Pinot Restaurant, just 3 Km from the Kentucky turn off on the New England Hwy, just south of Uralla, New England Australia. Developed by Stephen & Lyn Dobson, Eastview Estate is an emerging vineyard that is well worth a visit. The passion that Stephen and his wife Lynn have for their product is evident in the attention to detail in both the ambience they create at their very attractive cellar door and their restaurant, Pinot, and in the wines themselves.

Stephen Dobson - Winemaker

Stephen Dobson - Winemaker

Having the opportunity to “Meet the Winemaker” – Stephen Dobson, I found him to be a charming host who is passionate about the food and wine he and his wife Lyn produce and serve at their vineyard and restaurant. This passion is very self evident in the podcast I made at the vineyard.

The vineyard also features one of the less common grape varieties in Australia, Tempranillo. Tempranillo is the premium red wine grape variety from the Rioja region in Spain and is growing rapidly in popularity in Australia. Eastview Estate produce a range of wines including Tempranillo, Roca, a dry Spanish style rose which can be drunk either chilled or at room temperature, a very crisp and easy drinking fruity Semillon, two merlots, a drink now style and Reserve Merlot designed for cellaring as well as their very special Reserve Evolution Shiraz. The Eastview Estate Reserve Evolution Shiraz is a wine with a lot of structure, aged on French Oak and is the winery’s 2010 entry in the Jimmy Watson Trophy.

Pinot Restaurant Eastview Estate

Pinot Restaurant Eastview Estate

Integrated with the cellar door of the winery is Pinot Restaurant. The rich warm tones of the mahogany floor and the pressed steel bar and eclectic artworks of this 40 seat restaurant opens out on to a cool deck overlooking the vineyard and trellises of some of their Pinot Noir grapes. As you would expect the eclectic menu of the restaurant has been chosen especially to be a foil for the estate’s wines and feature Italian, modern Australian and a few Asian dishes ranging from pastas through grills and wet dishes.

Eastview Estate Gardens

Eastview Estate Gardens

I can’t think of a nicer way to spend a few hours than to while away the time with some great food and wine overlooking some truly beautiful Australian countryside. The Eastview Estate cellar door and Pinot restaurant is open from 10:00am to 4:00pm Wednesday through Sunday for lunch and wine tasting and is open on Friday evenings for dinner. Stephen tells me that the restaurant is often booked out so it is just as well to give them a quick call to book for lunch or dinner and the restaurant is available for group bookings on other nights of the week.

You will find Eastview Estate at 298 Kentucky Rd, Kentucky NSW, just off the New England Hwy. Ph 02 6778 7473.

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Preserving History with Personal Memoirs

December 8th, 2009 · Australian History

What is history without the personal memoirs of those who were there? Those who actually experienced the events and shared their thoughts on both the events and the times the occurred in.

Where would our researchers be without the chroniclers of the times?

Lieutenant General Watkin Tench

Lieutenant General Watkin Tench

I found the memoirs of Lieutenant-General Watkin Tench, who sailed as a Captain-Lieutenant of the marine detachment under Major Robert Ross on the “First Fleet” of convicts to Australia and arrived in Botany Bay on 20 January 1788, a treasure trove of information about the first European settlement of Australia. Published in London in 1793, Tench’s “A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson” (available online from Guttenberg Press) is one of two books of his personal memoirs which provide a window into the very first years of the establishment of the British Penal Colony at Port Jackson which was later to become Sydney.

Ulysses S. Grant

Ulysses S. Grant

Or perhaps you may be more familiar with the personal memoirs of Ulysses S Grant, 18th President of the United States. Published after his death in 1885, by Mark Twain, and dedicated by Grant to the American Soldier and Sailor, Ulysses S Grant’s personal memoirs concentrate primarily on the General’s actions during the American Civil War and have been praised for its conciseness and clarity. Grant’s memoirs are also available online and free via the Guttenberg Press Project if you are interested.

Bilarni - Bill Harney

"Bilarni" - Bill Harney

For myself, however, it is the stories of ordinary people whose personal memoirs paint a picture with their words, whether an audio life story or in printed words and pictures, that bring alive the essence of a place and time. Stories like that of “Bilarni”. Bill Harney, Australia’s greatest ever yarn-spinner and a “bushy” who was appointed, in 1957, as the first ranger at the Ayers Rock- Mt Olga National Park and was distinguished by his lifelong involvement with Aboriginal people of the Northern Territory. Some of “Bilarni’s” stories are preserved by the Australian ABC National Hindsight Program and you can still hear his voice recounting his tales 44 years after he passed from this life in 1965.

Whilst personal memoirs have been produced for centuries, and those of more prominent citizens such as Tench and Grant published and even popular, new methods of preserving the personal memoirs of ordinary people have risen in popularity over recent times. No longer the preserve of the wealthy or the prominent it is now within affordable reach of the ordinary “man in the street” to employ the services of a specialist oral history company such as Lifetime Memories and Stories in Australia, to preserve their personal memoirs or life story and pass this valuable history down to future generations of story keepers and historians.

Hopefully our descendents will have an even richer well of source material to drink from.

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Historic Maritime Photo Collection Sydney Australia

September 2nd, 2009 · Australian History

Aldinga Merchant Ship 1922 - Darling Harbour Sydney

Aldinga Merchant Ship 1922 - Darling Harbour Sydney

The Alfred & Roy Dufty Maritime Heritage Collection of Historic Maritime Photographs .

This is a fantastic collection of historic maritime photographs taken mainly in the Sydney Harbour environs that are now available online in a searchable data base via the Gosford City Council Maritime Heritage Collection.

Alfred William Buchanan Dufty was born at Kingston upon Thames, England in 1858. His father Francis was an early photographer in Bristol, England and the family emigrated to Australia in 1868.
After working as a photographer in Fiji with his brother Francis, producing an important body of work recording the local people and times, Alfred eventually settled in Sydney.

Sydney Harbour Ferry Barrenjoey 1913

Sydney Harbour Ferry Barrenjoey 1913

Many of Alfred Dufty’s maritime photographs were taken prior to 1900 and he established a studio in Erskine St Sydney, near the Sussex St intersection, close to Darling Harbour/Sydney Harbour and provided photographic prints to the seamen and officers of visiting ships, many of which he hand coloured.

This collection gives a great insight into the expansion of Sydney as a port and also into the early tourist souvenir trade with postcards of the visiting ships sold to passengers. There must be many tucked away in old boxes and collections throughout the world even to this day.

It is to photographers like Dufty we owe a great gratitude for preserving a snapshot of history. Will today’s digital images still be as available to historians of the future? I wonder?

For more information and access to the collection visit Gosford City Council Maritime Heritage Collection

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