“Early Breweries of the Murray, Murrumbidgee, and Darling Rivers: A Struggle for Survival” is the title of a new book written and published by Kerry Walton.
The format is slightly smaller than A4, being 18cm wide x 25.5 cm high, containing one hundred and fifteen pages on gloss paper. It is filled with a myriad of photos, which are predominantly coloured. Front and back are full colour (soft cover), with a photo of Wagga Wagga’s Albion Brewery being one of two breweries featured on the front cover.
Kerry started collecting beer labels when he was a young boy, and progressed from there to develop a broad interest in the history of the early Australian brewing industry.
This book is the result of over fifty years of collecting information by Kerry, which explains the breadth of material within the book.
The introduction gives a brief account of the earliest efforts of brewing in the colony, referring particularly to the efforts of John Boston & James Squire.
The book then consists of a section each on breweries in four different geographical regions.
1. Towns along the Murray River
2. Towns along the Murrumbidgee River
3. Towns along the Darling River
4. Towns in the Riverina region
Pages 43 to 74 detail those breweries that existed along the Murrumbidgee in the towns of Gundagai, Wagga Wagga, Narrandera, Hay, and Balranald.
The Wagga Wagga Breweries detailed are;
1. Royal Hotel Brewery (Baylis Street)
2. Albion Brewery (Baylis Street)
3. Murrumbidgee Brewery (The Esplanade)
4. Newtown Brewery (Murray & Forsyth Streets)
5. Wagga Wagga Brewery (Johnson Street)
6. Federal Brewery (The Esplanade)
Towns covered in the Riverina region, include Temora, Cootamundra and Adelong. Cootamundra is notably interesting because one of the breweries there was taken over by Edmund and Richard Resch. Edmund went on to establish the well known Waverly Brewery in Sydney.
In addition to the photos and sketches of breweries there are numerous graphics featuring advertisements from early newspapers, beer bottle labels, and brewery related paraphernalia.
Walton includes information about the towns in which these breweries existed, and about the people connected with them. The quality of the photos is excellent – someone has done a great job of enhancing less than perfect originals in a number of instances.
This book is a welcome contribution to our past history and will be appreciated by a wide diversity of people throughout our local region.
The author has produced two hundred copies only, and I suspect this book may not be readily available in the future.
Copies are available from Kerry Walton who can be contacted at the following email address:
“kandewalton@westnet.com.au” Cost is $25 plus postage.
Click here to see the list of breweries featured in the book Table of Contents
