STATE LIBRARY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA

J. D. SOMERVILLE ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION

OH 692/93

Full transcript of an interview with

ROGER MACMAHON

on 21 February 2002

by Rob Linn

Recording available on CD

Access for research: Unrestricted

Right to photocopy: Copies may be made for research and study

Right to quote or publish: Publication only with written permission from the State Library

2

OH 692/93 ROGER MACMAHON

NOTES TO THE TRANSCRIPT

This transcript was donated to the State Library. It was not created by the J.D. Somerville Oral History Collection and does not necessarily conform to the Somerville Collection's policies for transcription.

Readers of this oral history transcript should bear in mind that it is a record of the spoken word and reflects the informal, conversational style that is inherent in such historical sources. The State Library is not responsible for the factual accuracy of the interview, nor for the views expressed therein. As with any historical source, these are for the reader to judge.

This transcript had not been proofread prior to donation to the State Library and has not yet been proofread since. Researchers are cautioned not to accept the spelling of proper names and unusual words and can expect to find typographical errors as well.

3

OH 692/93 TAPE 1 - SIDE A

NATIONAL WINE CENTRE ORAL HISTORY PROJECT.

Interview with Roger Macmahon on 21st February, 2002.

Interviewer: Rob Linn.

Well, Roger, let’s begin at the beginning of your life. When and

where were you born?

RM: I was born on a girls’ school near Unley Road. Not that my mother

was a naughty little schoolgirl but it happened to be a hospital at the time.

So when was that, Roger?

RM: That was in September 1933. About three weeks later I had a

combination of scarlet fever and pneumonia. Mareeba Hospital was there

at the time and fortunately, for me at any rate, they pulled me through.

So, Roger, there you were born. Tell me about your parents. Who

were they?

RM: Jack and Annette. Originally both from Melbourne. Dad was a

second generation Australian. His grandfather was Irish, who married an

English lady. They immigrated to Australia and set up in a farm down in

Geelong. That’s where Dad was born.

He was working for a cork company in Melbourne selling, mainly, those

little stopper corks—tapered stopper corks—that they used at the time for

medicine bottles, and was offered a job in South Africa by this Spanish cork

company.

Anyway, it wasn’t until about forty years later that he finally got to South

Africa, because on the way he and this Spanish guy stopped into Adelaide

and found that there was some business here. And it wasn’t long

afterwards that the First World War started and Dad was called up. He

4

served most of the War over in the Middle East. Fortunately not in

Gallipoli. (Laughs)

He came back, was demobbed, set up his cork business again, and through

the War Repatriation Commission, or whatever it was called then, bought

this property at Pimpala, south of Reynella, which was a twenty-two

hectare property of vines and old house, which originally was a winery.

Dad always said it [belonged to] …

Kelly?

RM: Kelly. There was a bit of controversy there whether it was actually

Kelly’s winery or not.

This is Dr Kelly?

RM: Yes.

Yes, Alexander.

RM: But some others have said that, no, it wasn’t Dr Kelly, it was his

cousin. So I’m not quite sure about that.

Yes, well, it was perfectly possible.

RM: Yes.

So this was inland from where Main South Road is. To the east, in other words.

RM: To the east, yes.

Well, it’s quite likely. There were many small wineries there at the

time.

On this little piece you’ve written, Roger, you said that the vines there were mainly bush vines.

RM: They were all bush vines.

Including the Grenache, Doradillo, Muscatel, and sherry. What’s

that? Chenin Blanc?

5

RM: Well, yes. Some years later—many years later in fact—probably

about twenty years ago, a French bloke came out and looked at these

vines. He was not on our property of course. That had been sold. He said,

‘Oh, oh, you have the Chenin Blanc here’. ‘Oh, really?’ (Laughs) It

might’ve been thirty years ago, but it wasn’t all that long ago.

So was your father still in the cork trade -

RM: Yes.

- when he returned? So was he commuting from Morphett Vale

every day?

RM: Yes.

To Adelaide?

RM: Yes. Quite often by train.

On the Willunga line, would that’ve been?

RM: Yes. The old Willunga express. Express from one station to the

other. (Laughter) Usually. But sometimes coming out of Reynella, if it

was raining, the grade was a bit steep and the train would have to go back

to Reynella and take a run-up. That happened, you know, quite a number

of times. It was the old RX locomotive.

So that would be coming up from Brighton, would it? Up towards Reynella? Would that be the area?

RM: No, no. Going the other way to town.

Oh, down?

RM: Yes. Because from Reynella you can still see the remains of the old

track, and actually it’s quite steep. It’s a bit deceptive.

Oh, right. I knew the Pedlers Creek area was pretty steep, a bit

further on.

Your father, Jack -

RM: Jack or JB.

6

JB. Yes, that’s how I’ve heard him referred to—JB.

Had he kept this relationship with the Portuguese guy—or Spanish was it you told me?

RM: After I joined the company in about 1960 we were still importing from

Spain, but I found out afterwards that the reason we had to make a move

was because the supplies dwindled down and we just weren’t getting

proper things. It was apparently bought out by a German guy and given to

his son to run, and his son was more interested in fast girls and fast cars.

Just ran the bloody company down into the ground.

So we then started to buy corks from Italy, sourced in Sardinia, and

treated back in Italy. Then the two brothers that ran that were getting

very, very old, and eventually we had to move again. We went to a

Portuguese company. And we still import from Portugal but not from that

same company. It’s another company called (couldn’t decipher name).

I might come back to that part of the story later, Roger, because I’d

like to go through that in a bit more detail.

Just to revert to your earlier days again, what are your early

memories of that Reynella/Pimpala area?

RM: I wish I’d had a camera with me when I climbed to the top of that

radio tower at Reynella. That was on the morning of our wedding, forty

years ago, 12th May. It must’ve been—what?—1962. And my good friend,

Ken Liston, now deceased unfortunately, and I climbed to the top of the

tower before it was commissioned. Of course, you can’t climb up there

now, you’d get fined. But I didn’t have a camera and I wish I had.

Because at that time it really was country. We didn’t have any electricity

on to our house until about 1948, and life was really quite countrified. My

parents never had any locks on the house. That was deemed totally

unnecessary. Course, motor transport was around but nowhere near the

traffic that it is now. Apart from the South Road, just about all the other

roads, apart from Wheatsheaf Road in Morphett Vale and a couple of

streets in Reynella, were just gravel.

It was a good life though.

7

It would’ve been a mixed farming area, Roger, with a

predominance of vines and maybe oaten hay and that type of thing?

RM: A lot of vines to the east of South Road, but mainly to the west of

South Road—apart from some that Don Booth had near us. He was one of

our nearest neighbours—there was mainly farming land. Almonds, also,

were very predominant, too.

Yes. I know during the War that flax had been grown around that area.

RM: Yes. You’ve still got Flaxmill Road in Morphett Vale, of course.

Yes. I know that because I spoke to some people from the

Women’s Land Army and they worked down there during the War. Had quite a bit of fun I believe. It was an area renowned for its

community, too, I believe.

RM: I was a bit too young to have fun with them. (Laughter)

I wasn’t suggesting that, Roger, at all!!

You would’ve had contact I suppose with the wine industry from a pretty early age, Roger, with your father’s work. Can you

remember any of the contacts that came through?

RM: Oh, yes. Don’t ask me names just off-hand. But I used to go around

with Dad, even up to the river sometimes. And I guess I visited pretty well

every winery and knew everybody by the time I was a teenager.

And were you educated down at Reynella way?

RM: I went to Morphett Vale Primary School, which is on the corner—or

was on the corner of Beach Road and Main South Road. It’s now a funeral

parlour.

Yes, correct.

RM: It’s a beautiful building actually. It did get run down when some

government department had it and they just weren’t looking after it. I

8

don’t know if it’s Berrys, or somebody or other, who’ve got it now. It’s

looking pretty neat again.

And then I went to Pulteney Grammar School, mostly by train, except

when I hitchhiked.

Do I ask about that? (Laughs)

RM: Well, always at Marino. Coming home we had to tell the conductor if

we wanted to get off at what we called whistle stops, which were not major

stations. Sometimes we’d forget, or I’d forget, and in that case I’d wait

until the train got up level with the house and I’d pull on the air-brake.

And the driver would say, ‘You little bugger, I’ll get you in the morning’.

So in the morning Roger would miss the train and he’d go out to the South

Road and hitchhike. Sometimes with my good friend, Keith Neighbour.

Now deceased I think, or at least retired.

Yes, this is Keith who became an architect?

RM: Yes. And Jack Hume from 5DN. And, obviously, some others. It was

quite okay to hitchhike in those days.

Did you get to school on time though, Roger?

RM: Sometimes well before time because the Willunga express didn’t get

in until about ten to nine, then I had to catch a tram up King William Street

and walk to Pulteney. So I always missed the morning recess and prayers,

which was the one good thing about it. The only adverse thing was that I

also had to catch a train at twenty past five, which meant that I wasn’t able

to join in the normal sports. Because if I missed that train there was

Briscoe’s bus, which left—I think the last bus used to leave at about six.

So if I missed that I’d have to stay at my aunt’s.

During those school years for you, was your property still run as a

farm to farm the grapes and that type of thing?

RM: Oh, yes. And during the War—Dad didn’t go to the Second World War.

At least he was in the Army but he wasn’t overseas. They had an Italian

9

prisoner of war named Joe—came from Sicily. He was very, very pleased

to become a prisoner of war because he didn’t know anything about the

war. He was just grabbed, told to put on this particular uniform and shoot

those people in the other particular uniform. And he didn’t think much of

the war at all. He was a nice guy. And there were quite a number of

Italian prisoners of war around Reynella that I got to know quite well. But

he had absolutely never seen a tractor in his life before. And we had an old

two-ton Holt, [the firm] was later bought out by Caterpillar crawler tractor.

Devil of a thing to drive, and it was so sluggish that it could hardly pull

itself along, let alone a plough. When I was about ten I had to stay home

from school and teach Joe how to drive it. It took all my effort just to push

the clutch in with both feet. (Laughs)

So in those days were the grapes both pruned and harvested by

hand? Were local people involved with that?

RM: Yes, mostly local. Not pruning. Pruning was done mostly by blokes,

but the harvesting was done mainly by the ladies around Reynella and

Morphett Vale. And I guess McLaren Vale, of course, and so on.

So it was pretty much a regular industry for those local families.

RM: Oh, yes. Earned them a bit of extra pocket money. They were all

paid by the bucket rather than time. That was in our case, anyway.

And Roger, you were telling me off the air earlier, that one of your

parent’s great friends at the time was Leo Buring from Sydney. Is

that correct?

RM: Yes. He was a very good friend of my parents, and invariably came

up and had a meal with us. I did mention to you, Rob, earlier that on my

sixteenth birthday Leo telephoned to say that he was in Adelaide again and

would Mum and Dad like to go and have dinner with him at the South

Australia Hotel. Mum said, ‘Oh, look, I’m sorry but it’s Roger’s sixteenth

birthday’. ‘Oh, yes, bring Roger, too’. (Laughs) So there I was in my

best school suit. Even smuggled in a couple of glasses of wine.

10

You got behind Louis’ back?

RM: Well, actually [we were] pretty friendly with Louis at that time

because his son and my brother were both doing the same course at

university. So old Louis was pretty soft on us. (Laughs)

One of the rare occasions I think.

RM: Yes. (Laughs)

One of the very rare occasions.

RM: Probably only had to tip him half the price.

Yes, we won’t go into that. (Laughter)

What are your memories of Leo Buring?

RM: He was a gentleman. Always quite kind. Very nice. Had somewhat

of a German accent. And I suppose it might’ve been difficult for him, too,

during the war being so obviously German. He had a cousin here in

Adelaide—his name escapes me. Buring tobacconists. Very well known

tobacconists. Dad was quite friendly with them, too. So even I was able to

get some smokes in. In the latter part of the war, when I was about

eleven I think, I started smoking.

So that’s your memories of Leo.

RM: And of course, he was building up this winery in Tanunda. And I

didn’t have much involvement then because I was too young and at school.

So that would be Chateau Leonay.

RM: Yes.

Which is now Richmond Grove.

RM: Yes.

And that was quite a project for him I believe.

11

RM: Oh, very big project. And it was, you know, built like a fortress, too.

Very solid concrete walls, and you’d need an atomic bomb to blast it down I

think. (Laughs)

So yourself, Roger, after the war and after your studies, where did

you go—what were you involved with after high school?

RM: Well, I was working on the property. My brother was an engineer and

went over to Tasmania on the hydro-electric scheme. He was a civil

engineer.

Is that Brian?

RM: Yes. Mostly civil anyway.

When I was seventeen I put my age up to eighteen when I got to Tasmania

to get a licence. And I was driving trucks around there. That was a slack

time in the winery. So then I came back and worked with the old man.

Every now and then we’d have a ‘bluey’ so I’d shove off and do something

else.

I went to Sydney for six months. I did a few jobs, including working—I

think Grace Bros was a store [where] I was selling kids’ clothing.

Came back and then I went up to Koolymilka on the rocket range. You

won’t find it on any map. It was a “secret place”, where actually the range

was, but that’s where we were.

Talk about all the discomforts of the illegal immigrants up at Woomera, it’s

a bit of a laugh for me because I was in a two-man tent. (Laughs) No air-

conditioning. No amenities. No nothing. Except that we could drink

copious quantities of beer once we got back from work, which we had to

because they had a gut full of bull dust most of the time.

Yes, that would be right up there.

RM: Yes.

So in other words you did a whole run of jobs -

RM: Yes.

12

- all through the outback and anywhere you could get it.

RM: Yes, I’m a qualified plant operator.

Well, that could’ve come in very handy.

RM: Yes, bulldozers in those days were all cable operated, which is a far

cry from the hydraulic ones these days. And to start up some of the diesel

engines you had to start up a petrol engine first to warm up the diesel

engine, and then the petrol engine would kick it over.

So, Roger, come 1959, you become officially involved with JB

Macmahon. Is that right?

RM: Yes.

And what was the show like at that point?

RM: It was in a small office on the second floor in Steamship Buildings,

which is now where the State Bank is. The office itself was pretty crummy.

There was just Dad and another girl, Nina Friemanis. She was Latvian—

she and her husband. Anyway, I still see Nina occasionally. We were just

selling corks, bentonite, a few chemicals. We imported Baccarat crystal.

Baccarat, as in the gambling.

RM: Yes.

Same spelling.

RM: Same spelling. French crystal.

What was that crystal used for, Roger?

RM: Glasses.

Oh, I see what you mean. That type of crystal. Not actually a chemical crystal.

RM: No, no, no.

Drinking glasses.

13

RM: Drinking glasses.

That I’ve heard of.

RM: Yes. They used to come out in wooden barrels. Not barrels that you

could put any liquid into, but barrel soaked(?) containers. The glasses

themselves had tissue around them and they were packed in wood-wool.

And we’d carefully, obviously, unpack all the glasses, stack them up on one

side, and wood-wool on the other, and then we’d go and try and put the

wood-wool back in the barrel.

Ever do it?

RM: We could never do it.

No.

RM: We could never do it.

So were there many breakages from that?

RM: Virtually none.

Isn’t that incredible.

RM: Yes.

Incredible!

RM: Hardly any breakages. No, they certainly had their packing down to a

very fine art. (Laughs)

Your father then had not only been a cork merchant, he’d been

supplying all types of other things for the industry and for those

who drank as well.

RM: Sure. Yes. Anyway, when I came in I was more keen on machinery.

So I went overseas and through some friends, and good luck, managed to

get the agencies, which we still have to this day. So started up our, you

know, engineering division.

And I don’t know exactly which year, but three or four years later, my

brother, who had started up Macmahon Constructions, built this two-storey

14

building in Angas Street. So we moved across over to there, which were

far more spacious offices. Very nice.

Then we started to expand somewhat, and we started to employ more

employees. And we were there until—well, my father died in 1971, about a

fortnight before he was eighty-four. About eighteen months later we were

told by the then Portuguese people that they’d like us to start to treat corks

in Adelaide, which hadn’t been done in Australia at all before then. All the

corks, although they were mainly treated by them and they didn’t have to

be soaked, all their treatment was done overseas. So we looked around

and finally bought the premises in Osmond Terrace, Norwood, and set up a

cork factory and moved in there, I think, in February or March 1972. We

were there actually until about two and a half years ago. So moved out in

‘99 to Forestville—Leader Street, Forestville—where we are now.

Now on that trip that you did in the 60’s, where did you go through

Europe?

RM: It was mainly in Italy. At that time we were importing corks from

Sardinia and the treatment for those corks was in Asti. And through our

friends in Asti, I said, ‘Do you know anybody that makes good bottling

equipment, capsuling and labelling machines, filling machines etc etc’.

And it was mainly through them that they took me around and introduced

me to various companies. And I just made an assessment of those and

chose the ones that I thought were the best. And so it went on from there.

I made a few changes as the years went by, but basically we’ve still got the

same ones.

So when you came back and the machinery arrived from the people

you were working with, who were the companies that you were selling to here, or the individuals you were selling to?

RM: Oh, the major wineries, I guess, really. You know, Hardys, Penfolds,

Yalumba and so on. Some of the smaller wineries, too, I guess.

And then it wasn’t long before my friend Mel Frey told me that he was

going to go across to New Zealand with cork and wines, and would he like

15

me to try and sell our machinery on a commission. I said, ‘Yes, why not?

It’s fine’.

Anyway, that lasted about two years. Mel had, in the meantime, then

moved to Montana wines, which was then only a very, very small little

winery on the side of a very steep hill. But Mel was getting too busy with

that so I went over there and I appointed, eventually, David Betts from

Betts Engineering, which was a small family company but did a lot of

contract bottling—and also an engineering company. And they were our

agents for many years until they eventually took it over themselves.

That must’ve been an interesting time.

RM: Oh, it was. Oh, fascinating over there. The wines were bloody awful,

but the beer was good. That’s when they didn’t have a beer strike, which

happened most times I was over there.

Just in reflection, Roger, the change in New Zealand wines must be a bit pleasing to you after all these years.

RM: (Laughs) Oh, chalk and cheese really.

It is.

RM: But mind you, they were just coming out of a prohibition era. So I

don’t think they knew too much about it. Most of the winemakers north of

Auckland, anyway, were Dalmatians. Also in Western Australia, of course,

there are a lot of them

I was going to say, in the Swan Valley.

RM: Yes.

There’s a few of them.

TAPE 1 - SIDE B

16

So your organisation, Roger, moves to New Zealand and your friend, David Betts, helps out a bit there.

What were things like back in Adelaide? You’ve mentioned to me

on the phone, and I notice you’ve written down too, that there was a pretty regular Friday lunch slot.

RM: Yes. I don’t know exactly when it started. Jack Babidge would be

able to tell you that when you catch up with him. But it started off—oh, I

don’t know. As far as I know, not long after the Second World War at the

old Imperial Hotel. There were quite a big group of them. There weren’t

so many winemakers as wine merchants and anybody dealing with wine.

The Imperial got sold and knocked down and they moved to the Grosvenor

Hotel. I used to go there sometimes. And after Dad died, I don’t know—

I’d sort of lost track of them anyway. They’d moved to the Rex, I heard

later. And it wasn’t until—only a very few years ago that I met up with the

remnants of them. Keith Christie-Ling now deceased, Jack Babidge, Dick

Heath and a few others at the Kensington Hotel, and I still go and see them

sometimes. Not every Friday. When I go we’re down to three. (Laughs)

So it’s really only Dick Heath and Jack Babidge that are the sole remnants

of that group.

That’s been kept going for a long time though.

RM: But I think when they went to the Rex Hotel I was probably more

interested in going up and having a taste of champagne with Norm Walker,

and his father before he died.

Tell me about that, Roger. Where did you have the taste?

RM: Up in their Board Room at Auldana. Every Friday they had a Board

meeting, which of course we weren’t entitled to go to, but they’d always

finish by about 11 o’clock. And Dad and I, and later on myself, would go

up and just have a Friday morning taste. I always say a taste because it

was always—Norm would say, ‘Oh, gooday, Roger, would you like a taste?’

(Laughs) Never a glass.

17

And then quite often I’d go on and visit John Davoren and (couldn’t

decipher name) Harris up at Auldana Cellars, and they’d invariably be

eager to open a bottle of Grange(?) which was -

And you refused every time. I know.

RM: Oh, yes, yes. (Laughter)

Too much to keep going.

Is that indicative of the era, do you think, Roger? That there was a

lot of interaction between people.

RM: Yes, there was. The wine [industry]—and I say fraternity in all its

meaning, was a fraternity back then, and I’m glad there wasn’t a

breathalyser on the roads then either. Because it didn’t matter where

you’d go—you know, you’d go to Yalumba and invariably have a couple of

glasses with Rudi Kronberger or so on and so forth. It was sort of the

norm. Now, you go to a winery and you’re bloody lucky to get a glass of

water. (Laughs)

Actually you recorded a lovely story here I missed about Yalumba when Ray Ward was running the cellar up there. Your Dad placed

on order with him. Is that right?

RM: (Laughs) Yes.

Or, no, he placed an order with your Dad rather.

RM: Yes. For some corks and some (couldn’t decipher word). ‘Jack’, he

said, ‘where are those bloody corks?’ ‘Oh! What corks?’ He said, ‘I gave

you an order a couple of -’ —don’t know exactly how long now. ‘Oh! Oh!’

Dad put his hand in his pocket and pulled out the order. He’d totally

forgotten. (Laughter) It wasn’t often that Dad forgot an order, but that

usually meant a cigar at night.

Were a lot of orders at the time not even written down? It was just

done over the phone or one to one?

RM: No, that’s right. Yes, even quite big orders. I mean, Hermann

Thumm never—I don’t think ever gave me an order …

18

This is Chateau Yaldara, is it?

RM: Yes. I don’t think he ever gave me a formal order for machinery,

which was worth quite a few thousand dollars often.

And I guess you all knew each other. You trusted each other, and

that’s the way it was.

RM: Yes. That was the way it was.

Just reflecting on that for a bit, could that be done today, Roger?

RM: No. No way. Well, I could probably do it with certain ones. You

know, the old stagers, but it just wouldn’t happen. It’s now all

electronically recorded anyway. Then it goes through—I don’t know the

exact procedures that we use in our office. I’m a bit out of that. No, like

any other contractor, these days it’s all written down and i’s dotted and t’s

crossed and all that sort of thing.

It is a very different world. And I suppose one of the things in the

past, too, you’d have your Barossa Festivals and the like, and your wine weeks, when people would come together and it would just be

a great occasion.

RM: Yes. The wine week was a great occasion. I don’t know whether it

was on every year or every second year. I can’t remember. But my

parents used to love to go to them. And it was a good fraternisation. How

many did we go to, Bev? Two. But Mum and Dad went to numerous ones.

And then a bloke from a certain winery—I’ll tell you his name later—just

put the kybosh on it. Just said, ‘No. No. We’ve got to be more

businesslike. No more drinkings. No more fraternisation’. You know, he

was a real arsehole. (Laughs) He was also the one that brought in those

narrow necked bottles, which caused enormous angst in the industry, and

created huge problems for all of us suppliers of capsules, too.

So that rather put the end to that type of event?

RM: Yes. Just cut it right out, yes.

19

It’s still there to a degree with some of the families who’ve been

around for a long time, and the younger ones there still get together, but on a level now that you visit a winery and it tends to

be coffee rather than wine. And those were the days you’re talking

about when morning smoko they’d have their half bottles of Muscat or Port probably.

RM: Well, ever heard of Tawny (sounds like, Scholl)?

No.

RM: Well, Tawny used to work at—I don’t know if he’s still alive or not.

He used to work at Saltram. And he’d get through a flagon of Port a day.

This is in Peter Lehmann’s time, was it?

RM: Yes.

Gorblimey!

RM: And apparently one day all the directors were coming up. ‘Oh, shit,

where’s Tawny? Better hide him. Oh, there he is. It’s alright, he’s fixing

our telephone line up the top of a telephone pole. That’s alright’.

So, anyway, just as a the directors come out apparently, Tawny’s still up

there. Just as they come up, up came the flagon—glug, glug, glug.

(Laughter)

So they saw it all.

RM: Oh, he was notorious. Nice bloke but—you wouldn’t find those

characters these days.

You mentioned another instance, Roger, of the way business was

done -

RM: Have you got that on or not?

Yes, I have.

RM: Oh, okay.

20

You were mentioning, Roger, your salesman, Ian Paton, in Sydney.

Would you tell me that story? About his work with Penfolds.

RM: Well, Penfolds in Sydney were intent on putting in a champagne

bottling line. I don’t know if they were still making champagne at Rooty

Hill or not. I can’t remember now. That was their original champagne

cellars.

Anyway, this was for the cellars south of Sydney. And it was a pretty

awkward line because it had to go around a number of columns, which

were holding up the other storeys. Anyway, Ian measured it up and so on

and so forth, and then over the period—probably took him about three

days to do all this, and worked out all the costings, and sat down in the

Board Room with Penfolds, wrote out the quote. One of the girls at

Penfolds typed it out, presented it to—I’m not too sure whom now. It was

signed and sealed and he came back with the order. (Laughs) Now that

just wouldn’t happen these days.

No, not in that way.

RM: Actually that line never got to Sydney. It did get to Sydney but it

never got to the cellars because in transit Penfolds had ostensibly bought

out Kaiser Stuhl, and Keith Smith, who was the manager of Kaiser Stuhl at

the time, took over Penfolds, which was the first of two reverse takeovers

that I’ve seen -

The other one more recent.

RM: Yes. (Laughs) Just had one with Southcorp and Rosemount, which

was a reverse takeover.

Anyway Keith, and some other advisers no doubt, decided that they’d scrap

the new champagne cellars that they were building, in what is now

Woodcroft, and set up all the champagne cellars in Nuriootpa, and bring

the bottling line over to Nuriootpa, which they did. And it was running at

Nuriootpa for quite a number of years until about seven or eight years ago

I suppose. They took it all across to Great Western.

21

Now this is a reversion back to where we left off probably half an

hour ago, Roger, so I apologise for that, but talking about your own firm’s progress with the cork trade. You said that you were with

some Italian merchants for a time from Sicily. Is that correct?

RM: No, from Sardinia.

Sardinia, that’s right. And then you made contact with some Spanish people as well, but you ended up in Portugal. I think

you’ve been through—what?—two firms there?

RM: No, we had these Spanish people first. They were the people that

first employed my father back in 1913, and that ended not long after I

joined the company. So that would’ve been in the early 1960’s after the

German installed his son there and ran the place down. (Laughs) And we

had to hurriedly find somebody else, and we then got this Sardinian

company. And they were very good corks, too. But the two brothers were

fairly elderly, and I think eventually they just sort of started to close things

down and we had to find another company, which we did in Portugal. And

we were with them for a number of years, and then changed to another

company in Portugal, with whom we’re now have a joint venture.

In the earlier days, up until say the 70’s, how did the corks arrive in Australia?

RM: They arrived in bales, as they still do. Cut, graded, but they were

also treated. Now the treatment that they used is really just a tumbling in

wax. There was no sterilisation. When we started to treat corks we used a

different process. We de-dusted first, then we used more of an emulsion

than a dry wax. And we also had to print here. But over the years that’s

changed quite dramatically, and now it goes through a process of dust

removal. We test the corks for humidity, and we spray on distilled water to

bring them up to 7%, or as near as we can to 7%.

No, sorry. Before that they’re printed, then they’re humidified, and once

humidified they go into sealed bags with some sulphur so that any spores

can’t generate on the humidity inside the bags. Then they go into the final

tumbler where they’re given a surface treatment of our secret emulsions,

22

which is waxes and silicones and so on, but it is an emulsion. Then they go

into a counter where they are accurately counted, sealed up again with

some SO2, into bags per thousand, and they’re put into cartons and away

they go to the winery.

Roger, the printing side, is that quite detailed? I know that they’re

a type of stencil, aren’t they, for the winemaker. Whatever they want to put on there.

RM: Yes, it’s a printing block. The corks are just run over this printing

block, which is a pretty basic block. It can be whatever the customer

wants. It can be very detailed. It can be hugely covering the cork as with

Rosemount where you’ve got r’s—not r’s for Roger, r’s for Rosemount—all

over the cork so you can hardly see the cork—to just a simple dolphin,

which is now our trademark for the new delphin(?) process, which is a

microwaving process developed in Germany.

Now this microwave is about thirty metres long. Nothing like you have in

your kitchen. And nowhere near as powerful actually. The idea is that the

moist corks—and they are pre-moisturised—goes through the system and

as you know, a microwave starts from the centre. So it heats up from the

centre and sort of drives all the nasties out, where they’re sucked away,

and come out squeaky clean. Or at least we hope they do.

So that’s a relatively new treatment?

RM: That’s quite new, yes. Only about twelve months old, for us.

And has that quality control over the corks been a great help to the cork industry proper? Because there was a time when there were

all sorts of question marks.

RM: Oh, undoubtedly. Even before this microwave—and we still do this.

We have checks on all corks that come in. Unfortunately you can only do a

few corks per bale of course. The corks have to be chucked out afterwards

and given to the Girl Guides, where they’re made up into gaskets by a firm

in Melbourne. But our quality control takes up quite a bit of space and is

very important.

23

So, Roger, since we’ve been talking today, you’ve mentioned some

of the many changes that have occurred in the industry, and you mentioned by the by that orders have gone from handwritten to

electronic, and that’s the way of it today. And it’s a very different

era. But what would perhaps be the biggest change you’ve seen over the years in the industry?

RM: Well, the biggest changes I think is probably the fact that the industry

is now more sophisticated. It’s very much more industry oriented. Before

it was farming people making wine. It was not regimented particularly,

probably not even particularly well. But now it really is big business. Even

with a small winery they have to be pretty much on the ball to compete.

And I think that’s the main difference. And you know, it’s just—I don’t say

dog eat dog by any means, but it is far more business oriented and

formalised. I think that’s the big difference.

So in your early days it would’ve been much more a family

concentration, would you say?

RM: Oh, very much so, yes. Far more relaxed.

I suppose one of the things that’s really been symptomatic in this is the

advance in communication, too. Because back in the early days, in my

father’s day, communication was either by telephone, which was very rare

because it was too expensive—I’m talking of overseas now. They hardly

ever telephoned overseas. Even if you could get through, you were lucky.

By telegraph, and you had a coded address to save time, and time was of

the essence, too, in telegrams.

Then along came Telex. Thumping, great machines. Noisy damn things

they were but very effective. Then, of course, you got fax machines, which

we still use. And we’ve also got email.

And as these progressed, so the expectation of the customer progressed

from a sort of, ‘Well, when it gets here, she’ll be right’, to ‘Just in time’,

almost. And they expect things, you know, boom! Even though they’re

coming from overseas.

24

Now that’s a bit better now because the unions are not dominating the

shipping so much and we don’t have the strikes and hold-ups that we used

to. Just as well, too.

So that’s probably the biggest change from your industry’s point of

view I guess, would be in that side of things.

RM: Yes.

Also we don’t have to go through customs as we used to. When I first

started with my father we had to, in fact, get the okay from the United

Kingdom—or at least their office in Victoria Square—to import. Because if

a similar thing was available from England the Australian government

expected you to get it from the mother country.

That’s not that long ago, Roger.

RM: Not that long ago, no. (Laughs) Anyway, fortunately, that ended.

Duties. Well, that was never a problem. I mean, if you had to pay duty,

well, it was up to the customer. It was accepted.

Same thing with variable exchange rates. What we’d do normally—it was

up to the customer, too, as to whether they wanted to put on forward

exchange or just take the risk that the value of the dollar wouldn’t change

too much. That’s still the case.