In 1883, the building of Roseworthy Agricultural College some 50 kilometres north of Adelaide had begun and the first students were admitted in 1885. In 1892, lectures in viticulture and oenology were introduced into the Diploma of Agriculture course, but oenology remained an optional third year subject until 1936, when the Roseworthy Diploma in Oenology was first offered and began slowly to introduce scientific method and sound technology into the Australian industry.[105] This resulted from the contributions of A. R. Hickinbotham to wine chemistry and of J. C. M. Fornachon to an understanding of microbial diseases of wine, but the significant advances in wine technology came much later after the Australian Wine Research Institute was set up in 1955.

Soft Drinks

Reference has already been made to the introduction of soft drinks to the Australian colonies. Two examples of the early establishment of the technology, virtually as we know it today, will suffice. Heavy drinking on the gold fields seems greatly to have been exaggerated and when Evan Rowlands and Robert Lewis in 1854 began to manufacture drinks in a tent on the shores of Lake Wendouree at Ballarat, there were already thirteen other aerated water 'factories' slaking the miners' collective thirst.[106] They were all manual operations, so that when Rowlands and Lewis introduced a Taylors No. 1 machine they had a distinct advantage. They made lemonade, soda water, and ginger beer, and as their business grew, they purchased more equipment. In 1858, they introduced steam power and began to use Warrenheip spring water.

In 1870, Rowlands and Lewis opened a new factory in Dana Street and installed three double action soda water machines with a combined capacity of 3,500 dozen bottles per day. This plant was made in Ballarat by G. G. Norman, supervised by Rowlands and was claimed, with understandable local pride, to be the equal of anything anywhere. There was no reason why it should not have been good for, at this time because of the demands of the gold fields, the Victorian engineering infrastructure was excellent. In July 1873, a Melbourne plant was opened. The first day's output was six dozen bottles, surely a ceremonial production, but by the mid-eighties output was over 3,500 dozen per day. Warrenheip spring water was supplied to the Melbourne factory and all other lines of a steadily expanding range were made at both locations except that soda water was made only at Ballarat. Lewis retired in 1876, but Rowlands continued and invented and patented an improved soda water bottle. The water used in Rowlands products was filtered four times but his attempts to use local corks failed on quality grounds. He was a stickler for quality, which was so good that many outside Victoria paid the 'premium' imposed by inter-colonial customs duty payable at that time, but by the 1890s, Rowlands had factories in Ballarat, Melbourne, Sydney, and Newcastle. He died in 1894 but his company continued until well after the Second World War, when it was sold to Schweppes.

Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering