I am writing this to prompt a greater awareness and concern about the Australian wine industry's heritage. In particular, I want to draw attention to arguably Australia's most important wine heritage site, the 'Kirkton' winery of James Busby, which is now used as a domestic rubbish tip! I have previously written in this column (Wine Industry Journal, May 1995) about how the Australian wine industry failed to celebrate its 200th birthday, but fortunately the NSW Historical Society remembered. I became interested in James Busby when I worked in New Zealand in the 1980S. I was, of course, familiar with his viticulture work in Australia, but had previously not realised the key role he played in NZ's history But more of that later. It was about 10 years ago that I found Busby's Kirkton property in the Hunter Valley.
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