Bill Jamieson remembers how it all began
It isn’t always easy to say exactly how things start but Bill Jamieson remembers the time, back in 1950, when he met the legendary Maurice O’Shea in the Hunter Valley.
O’Shea, a graduate of Montpellier University, France’s Mecca for viticulturalists, was the founder of Mount Pleasant Wines and had been a winemaker and viticulturalists since the 1920’s (he died in 1956).
“Although he had never been to WA, Maurice said if he could begin his career over again, he would start a vineyard somewhere near Albany,” recalled Bill.
“That started me thinking about the south.”
But at the time, he said, there was almost no interest in table wines in WA.
Len McColl, then with the Swan Brewery, took a party of Frenchmen to look for wine-growing country near Mt Barker.
“Len came back and said it was a lot of rubbish,” said Bill.
However, by 1955, worries about the future of the Swan Valley grape industry were increasing.
“There were mematodes (eelworms) attached vine roots, virus disease such as yellow mosaic and waterlogged soils causing great problems,” Bill said.
Professor Harold Olmo was brought from California to advise. Bill Jamieson suggested he look south for alternative country. Olmo surveyed country from Kendenup to Manjimup and was to recommend, not Albany, but Mt Barker and Rocky Gully. However nothing more was done for years to find new vineyard areas. Some people suggested that the fact the Minister for Agriculture, Crawford Nalder, was a teetoller may not have helped. It was another Minister, Charles Court, whose portfolio was Industry Development, who characteristically got something moving.
“He wanted the grape industry de-centralised,” Bill said.
“And by 1964, demand for table wines, as distinct from fortified wines that had mostly come out of the Swan Valley, was taking off.”
Bill had already done some work in the south at Tynedale, north of Bunbury, where he advised Dr Tom Cullity about a pilot of planting vines. Dr Cullity was to lead the move to Margaret River.
In 1965 Bill Jamieson found himself planning and planting an experimental vineyard for the WA Government at Forest Hill near Mt Barker.
“It was virgin land,” he said.
“We ripped out big stumps, stuck in vine cuttings and hope for the best. I shouldn’t have allowed myself to be pushed into planting that year; we should have put it under a crop for two years.”
The cuttings failed, waterlogged, and Mr Nalder came along to say what a waste of time and money it had been. But Bill persisted and the vines were replanted, to produce outstanding cabernet sauvignon and rhine riesling wines made in 1970 by Swan Valley winemakers Jack and Dorham Mann.
At the end of 1965, Dr John Gladstones published his celebrated suggestion that Margaret River should be the next prime wine region and by 1967, Tom Cullity was there, planting the Vasse Felix vineyard. The Margaret River story had begun.
“John Gladstones was a whiz at climatology so what he said was right, but we had to advise caution; a lot of things could go wrong. I would spend two or three days at Mt Barker, then travel across to Margaret River to cope with the demands of intending vignerons and it got a bit strenuous at times.
“The basic technique was to make holes in the ground with something like a crowbar, 12 or 13 inches deep and put the cutting in so there was one bud at ground level and another above it, with the rest in the ground; they had no roots. I advised on all the basic skills: site and soil selection, which varieties of vines to plant, pruning, trellising etc. One vigneron, who is now quite prominent, couldn’t understand why some of his vines had failed. I found they’d been planted at about a fifth of the depth they needed; they never had a chance.
“Some of the locals thought vine growing was a pretty funny way of farming, and I can remember people from the local shire doing a bit of sniggering among themselves when they saw what we were trying to do. There hasn’t been much of that for a while.”
Choice of vine cuttings was limited to rhine riesling, cabernet sauvignon and shiraz acquired from Houghtons in the Swan Valley.
“We couldn’t import material from anywhere, in Australia or overseas, for fear of phylloxera bugs and other diseases. Later, we enlisted the CSIRO and introduced new varieties but they had to be certified virus-free and spend two years in quarantine.”
Bill Jamieson, who fought in Borneo and the islands during World War II, was made an MBE in 1982 ‘for services to viticulture and the wine industry”, which understates his key role in fostering the table wine industry of Western Australia.
(A Vision of Fine Wine, © Margaret River Wine Industry Association, 1997)
