Murray Darling

The Murray-Darling region, as its name implies, stretches along the Murray River, on both sides in fact. It is in north-west Victoria and also western New South Wales, but is mostly on the Victorian side of the border. The main centre is Mildura, with Red Cliffs, Robinvale, Euston and Merbein also significant.

The local Aboriginal people who lived within the region were known as the Latje Latje and Yerre Yerre. In 1830, Charles Sturt came upon the river he named the Murray, after George Murray (another English politician of the time), not realising that Hume and Hovell had already discovered the same stream and given it the name Hume. Soon after this, sheep were brought into the district and the area began to be supplied by the many paddle steamers that once plied up and down the Murray, making it, as a visiting Mark Twain in the 1880’s thought, a river system comparable to the Mississippi. But this was not to be as the railways gradually destroyed the need for the river as a transport system.

The Murray-Darling region continued as sparsely settled grazing land until the development of large scale irrigation. This occurred when a Canadian named George Chaffey began to transform the Murray grazing land into a rich agricultural region. He began at a sheep station at Mildura where a settlement was established in 1887. Mildura is an Aboriginal word meaning either ‘red sand’ or ‘sore eyes’. Despite rabbit plagues and other difficulties, the new town of Mildura grew and is today a major regional centre of over 50,000 people.

With irrigation, vineyards soon began to develop around Mildura, as well as at Red Cliffs and Euston; the warm climate and constant, plentiful water making the Murray-Darling region, like the NSW region of Riverina, one of the largest wine producing regions in Australia. Today it has some 1,300 growers and over 23,000 hectares are planted in vineyards.

The Murray-Darling region reaches from Balranald in New South Wales to the South Australian border, a distance of some 350 kms, and also includes parts of the Darling and Murrumbidgee Rivers. The climate is hot, with long hours of sunshine, low humidity and such low rainfall that without irrigation all growing would cease. Frosts are not a problem, and overall disease has little impact.

The emphasis in the Murray-Darling region is on Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon, though a range of grape varieties are grown, with fortifieds such as Muscat Gordo Blanco, Semillon and Colombard also produced. In fact more Chardonnay is produced by the Murray-Darling region than anywhere else in Australia. One winery responsible for this fact is also one of the largest winemakers in Australia, Simeon Wines, which in 2001 made 125 million litres of wine, or some 12% of Australia's total production. It has many wineries, and that at Buronga Hill near Mildura was established in 1984. Buronga Hill sources its grapes from over 500 local growers and uses modern, high-tech methods to transform them into wine.

George Chaffey not only brought irrigation to the Murray-Darling region but with his brother, W. B. Chaffey, established Chateau Mildura to produce wines. This venture ceased many years ago but was reborn when the historic building was purchased by Lance Milne and converted into a boutique winery. Part of the building is now also a museum. Also related to the Chaffey brothers in another sense is Brockville Wines. This label is named after a town in Canada where the Chaffey brothers originated, the reason for this being that the owner of Brockville Wines is the grandson of W. B. Chaffey. The Brockville vineyard is only a few kilometres from the original winery and has been growing grapes since 1975, and doing so under their own label since 1999.

Situated in an impressive Tuscan style cellar door, the Oak Valley Estate Boutique Winery is on the site of one of Mildura's earliest farms, the Kia Ora Dairy. Owned and operated by the De Blasio family, the winery specialises in some of the less common table wines such as Grenache, Muscatel and Black Muscatel. Local jams and preserves, dried fruits and olive oils, all grown and processed on the Oak Valley Estate are also available.

A final winery of note is that of Mr. & Mrs. George Caracatsanoudis, who established Robinvale Organic Wines in 1976. Here are to be found a range of biodynamic, organic and preservative-free wines as well as non-alcoholic beverages and grape juices. The Robinvale winery is built of Mt. Gambian limestone and is designed to resemble a Greek temple; the limestone ensuring a cool temperate cellar.

Stefano De Pieri, in his fascinating TV series, A Gondola on the Murray, demonstrated to the world the diversity of the Murray-Darling region in terms of foods and fine wines. Visitors can get a taste of this diversity at events such as the Mildura Country Music Festival in October, and the Mildura Jazz, Food and Wine Festival in November.

Chardonnay is far and away the most important product of the region, while the increasing popularity of red wine has meant more plantings of Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon. Colombard is a table wine much produced by the Murray-Darling region, as are many excellent fortified wines.