Grapes Of Wrath

Newcastle Herald

Saturday January 19, 2008

writer John Lewis

THE Drayton family holds an illustrious place in the annals of Hunter and Australian winemaking, but it has been stalked by tragedy over the 156 years since patriarch Joseph Drayton left his native Lincolnshire bound for Pokolbin.

Thursday's disastrous explosion and fire at the historic Drayton Family Wines Bellevue winery in Oakey Creek Road, Pokolbin, which claimed the life of Trevor Drayton, comes 31 years after another black chapter in the family's history.

Winemaker Barrie Drayton was suffocated by fumes when cleaning out a wine tank at his Hillside winery in Marrowbone Road, Pokolbin. His death occurred six months after his wife Rhonda had suddenly died from hepatitis, leaving behind four young daughters.

On October 2, 1994, former Hunter Valley Vineyard Association president Reg Drayton and his wife Pam died with seven others when a Seaview aircraft crashed on its way to Lord Howe Island.

As they undoubtedly will in the aftermath of Thursday's events, the Draytons will stare down misfortune with the same quiet energy, initiative and resilience displayed in the late 1850s by Joseph Drayton.

Joseph, born in 1825, was the fourth son in a family of 11 children and found work as a farm labourer in the Stow area. In 1848, at the age of 22, he married 19-year-old Hannah Marsden. The pair had three children, Frederick, Charles and Emily, before deciding to quit England and venture forth as assisted migrants to Australia.

They set sail in October 1852 on board a two-decked vessel, the Beejapore, which was chartered by the British Government as an experiment in saving costs by packing more migrants on a single ship.

The experiment proved to have disastrous consequences because the ship lacked adequate ventilation and in the cramped conditions measles, typhus and scarlet fever spread unchecked, ultimately killing 55 people on the 85-day voyage to Australia and a further 62 at Sydney Quarantine Station.

One of the deaths at sea was two-year-old Charles Drayton. While in quarantine Hannah gave birth to another baby daughter, but then she and elder daughter Emily joined the Beejapore death list.

Finally cleared from quarantine on February 9, 1853, Joseph Drayton, his four-year-old son Frederick and his newborn daughter set out for Lochinvar, where Joseph found work as a farmhand.

After a time he took up 16 hectares of land at Pokolbin, built a slab hut, planted vegetables, wheat and wine grapevines, and called the property Bellevue.

In 1855 Joseph remarried and he and his second wife, Mary Ann Chick, had eight children sons Charles, William, Joseph, Henry Edward and George Herbert, and daughters Frances Ellen, Charlotte and Mary Elizabeth.

Joseph died in 1887. Bellevue passed to second-eldest son William after Mary Ann's death in 1908.

William and his wife Susanne had nine sons and one daughter. The family expanded its Pokolbin land holdings and earned a living with cropping, dairying and grape growing. To turn his grapes into wine, William built the Bellevue winery and also supplemented the family income by working on the roads for the magnificent sum of four shillings and six pence a day.

The Draytons' adaptability and capacity for hard work sustained them through tough times, particularly during the 1920s and 1930s when the wine trade faltered and the family relied on dairying and market gardening to pay the bills.

The Great Depression brought some particularly bitter experiences. In 1929 the Draytons contracted to sell a big batch of their wine to a Sydney merchant for what was then an excellent price of five shillings a gallon. However, the merchant reneged on delivery and payment as the Depression knocked the bottom out of the market. The Draytons were stuck with the wine, which ultimately had to be sold for nine pence a gallon or distilled into spirit.

In 1938 when he was in his sixties, William retired and divided his properties among his children. Two sons, William jnr and Lewis, were given what was known as the Crow's Nest block (now owned by McWilliam's Mount Pleasant), which they sold and then embarked on careers as carpenters. Two other sons, Ernest and Wesley, inherited the Happy Valley vineyard in Oakey Creek Road, which is now the Golden Grape vineyard. Happy Valley eventually passed into the hands of Ernest's son, the late Barrie Drayton.

After William Drayton's 1938 retirement, four of his sons, Harry, Walter, George and Len, went into the Bellevue-based family business, which in 1947 was formed into the W. Drayton and Sons Pty Ltd company.

Over the next 42 years the shareholding in W. Drayton and Sons evolved into four 25 per cent parcels held by fourth-generation Draytons Max (son of Walter), Reg (son of George), Ron and Jock (sons of Harry) and Bill (son of Len).

In 1989, however, the company was restructured with W. Drayton and Sons being bought by Max Drayton and three of his four sons, John, Trevor and Greg.

Former director and winemaker Reg Drayton branched out into his own winemaking venture based on the Pokolbin Hills, Lambkin Estate and Ivanhoe vineyards.

After Reg and Pam Drayton's death their daughter Robyn and son Stephen established individual wine ventures

The core W. Drayton and Sons company was set up as Drayton's Family Wines, with former teacher John Drayton as general manager, Trevor Drayton, a brilliant technician who was dux of his Roseworthy wine course, as chief winemaker and Greg Drayton, a Tocal Agricultural College graduate, as the vineyard manager.

Max, 75, who this year chalks up his 61st year in the Drayton enterprise, holds the title of managing director and in 2006 was awarded an Order of Australia Medal for his services to the wine industry.

Six months ago Max and his wife Caroline were the focus of a Drayton family celebration when Max was named as one of the Hunter's six inaugural Living Legends of Wine.

It was a well-merited honour, but one Max may not have lived to achieve. In 1959 he narrowly escaped death when operating a tractor in a Drayton vineyard. The tail of an old coat he was wearing caught in a tractor's drive shaft and he was flung to the ground. His left arm suffered a 25-centimetre gash, most of the skin was torn from his back and a tangle of clothes around his neck threatened to choke him. Fortunately the old coat, made threadbare by long usage and spray stains, gave way in time.

As they undoubtedly will in the aftermath of Thursday's events, the Draytons will stare down misfortune with the same quiet energy, initiative and resilience displayed in the late 1850s by Joseph Drayton.

© 2008 Newcastle Herald

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