REMEMBERING OSMAR ON ANZAC DAY

Osmar White in 1942

Here's one you didn't know about: the White who wrote of wine and war
from PHILIP WHITE, in awe and respect of, and mainly by OSMAR WHITE


One of my most treasured wine books, and precisely-reliable historical reference works, is Osmar White's A Guide and Directory to Australian Wines. 

This remarkable man had many lives. 

With the passage of ANZAC day, a time when Australia and New Zealand solemnly contemplate the green young warriors we helped storm off to wars at the other ends of the Earth, I've thought a lot about Osmar, and marveled with admiration and horror re-reading his Green Armour, a riveting account of Australia's own war against the Japanese invaders in the jungle of New Guinea.

This book reveals an acutely observant brain carried in a tough, compact, dogged body. The detail with which he records the geology, geography, fauna and flora of that formidable land matches the frank horrors of his war reportage. 

Diggers in the jungle: Commandos of 2-5 Company  ... photo Osmar White 

Here's a typical passage: 

"It did not take me long to realize that carrying a 50-pound load up and down razorbacks demanded quadruple the energy expended in straight, unburdened climbing. We made Uberi after three hours’ scramble over a stiff ridge. The forest was comparatively open and the trail in fair condition. No rain had fallen for nearly a week. The main body of troops had gone through four or five days before. Since then there had been just enough traffic on the drying ground to settle the clay.

"The engineers had done considerable work on the old native path already. Before that, traveling had been almost impossible. 

"On one clay slope elements of the 39th Battalion were reported to have taken 17 hours to travel 600 yards. They had to cut their way up the chute as mountaineers would cut a traverse on a snowfield.

"In spite of the improved route the second stage was a long , extremely hard day. After leaving Uberi the route lay along the river flats for awhile. Then it slanted up a razorback into which more than 1,000 steps had been cut. In three or four miles it rose 2,000 feet. From the crest was a magnificent prospect of ranges sweeping down into the valley of the Brown River.

"The formation of the trail had psychological drawbacks. The more or less regular steps seemed to make the going more difficult than an unimproved native trail, where stepping from root to root broke the monotony even if it slowed progress. At the foot of Uberi ridge a severe rainstorm caught us in the early afternoon. Parer started worrying about his film again, but I found the rain refreshing, the violent claps of thunder stimulating.

"Eoribaiwa village stood on top of a 2,500-foot ridge. The engineers had let in 4,000 steps on the approach. That night I saw what the country could do to raw troops. A detachment of engineers came in behind us in full marching order. Most of them were big men and fit by normal standards. They made the last few 100 feet climb out of the valley in 5- or 10-yard bursts. Half of them dropped where they stood when they reached the plateau. Their faces were bluish gray with strain, their eyes starting out. They were long beyond mere breathlessness. The air pumped in and out of them in great, sticky sobs; and they had 100 miles of such traveling ahead.

"The spilled loads of heaven"  ... bearers on the Bulldog Track ... photo Osmar White 

"Parer again distinguished himself for guts. Clipped by a sharp dose of fever – his first acute attack – pale, streaming profusely with sweat, and at the same time shivering violently, he refused stubbornly to stop. In the morning, almost forcibly, I made him split his pack between us. He would stop every hour or so, reeling on his feet, and protest that he was capable of carrying his own gear.

"The ‘beef’ was vanishing from chubby Wilmot before our eyes. His technique of travel was amusing. Downhill he took terrific, two-yard strides that would have broken my ankles. He went like a whirlwind, outstripping the rest of us by miles. But when we struck the next hill, we drew even. Halfway up we would pass him hoisting one leg after the other with agonized slowness. Three hundred yards away his grunts, groans, whistlings and profane cries were audible. He clawed his way to the crest and fell flat on his face. If he had not been as strong as an ox he would have scrambled his guts. He was the wrong build for this sort of work – but the right temperament. He was still grunting, cursing and whistling at the end of the day – and still traveling.
 

"There was rain every afternoon. The nights were getting chillier as we climbed, and the staging camps were yet inadequate. I could hardly believe that 2,000 troops, raw to such conditions, had passed that way and left so few stragglers. They were men of great heart."

Jungle camp on Kokoda, above ... below: happier days in the Australian bush before the war: Osmar with his mum, Mary Grace White, dog Puck, an unkown boy and Jim Starkey

After all that, and numerous other battles and books and a life in newspapers, it must have been a breeze to get the corkscrew out, sit back and bash out a wine book.

A Guide and Directory to Australian Wine (Landsdowne Press, 1972) pretty much set the pace and style of many other Australian wine guides to come, few of them done with such crisp journalese or reliable research. For the Oz wine historian, it is the essential work on the state of the business a decade before the amazing boom which continues to this day.

Here's Osmar's summary of Penfolds, 46 years back:

What is it with these White wine writing men? Not to be confused, sundry others: the author with Tim at A. P. John Cooperage: not a war between them ... photo John Kruger