BY JINGO! JOHNNY GILBERT KICKS TOP BUTT

CLICK THE HUSKY TO SEE DRINKSTER'S APPRAISAL OF NEW BY JINGO HUMDINGERS MENDOZA CHARDONNAY FROM THUNDERBIRD VINEYARD AND A MONTEPULCIANO-ZINFANDEL FROM Mt BARKER photo MOGO CELLARS

APPELLATION SOUTH AUSTRALIA: NUTS

CARTO GRAPHICS' CLEVER NEW TOPOGRAPHIC MAP FOR BAROSSA GRAPE AND WINE AS SEEN BY THE FIGHTER PILOT ... THE ALTITUDES HERE, HOWEVER, ARE EXAGGERATED FOR EFFECT. CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE.

Mount Lofty Ranges Regions
Wrong Borders, Wrong Names?
Who's In Charge Of Change?

by PHILIP WHITE - this story originally appeared in THE INDEPENDENT WEEKLY

The Barossa Grape and Wine Association has just released a clever, handsome and revealing topographical map of the viticulture zone called Barossa. This transverse slice of the South Mount Lofty Ranges was delineated by the local vignerons and the Geographical Indications Committee, a subsidiary of the Australian Wine And Brandy Corporation, the Government statutory authority which polices wine law.

The map was made by Carto Graphics. As it was completed, I coincidentally noticed an increase in wineries using Mount Lofty Ranges as their location. The official wine appellation doesn’t suit them.

There are two reasonably distinct ranges that run from the tip of the Fleurieu to Peterborough; South Mount Lofty Ranges from Cape Jervis to around Eudunda; North Mount Lofty Ranges further to the west, running through Clare and Burra to fizzle out in the desert around Peterborough. North and west of them run the Flinders: Southern, then Northern. These names are official topographical names for standard maps, so they can be easily located by people all over the world.

Not so for our official wine appellation boundaries. These are, well, different. There’s a huge slab of country called The Adelaide Superzone, which includes the Barossa, Fleurieu and Mount Lofty Ranges Zones. The latter Zone contains the Adelaide Hills, the Adelaide Plains and the Clare Valley Regions. The Adelaide Hills Region contains the delineated Sub-regions of Lenswood and Piccadilly Valley, as well as other land that extends north to where the appellation abruptly and illogically becomes the Eden Valley Region in the Barossa Zone, as distinct from the Barossa Valley Region to the west.

Like the Barossa Zone, the Adelaide Hills are not on any ordinary map. This is a colloquial and nebulous term for some of the hills in the South Mount Lofty Ranges. Kuitpo, Mount Barker, and Hahndorf are in the Adelaide Hills Region, Harrogate and Kanmantoo are not. Dumb.

What a pity these boundaries were not set on existing place names, or more easily determined geographical and geological features that were on maps for a century before Australian wine appellations were invented! I initially suggested that the Adelaide Superzone was so named because everyone in the wine world was presumed to know of the whereabouts of Adelaide University, which is smug about its wine course. GIC members have since scorned this idea. Because Adelaide proper is not in any hills or ranges, the South Mount Lofty Ranges Superzone would have had more natural clarity, as Adelaide is on their floodplain and piedmont.

Then, the North Mount Lofty Ranges would make more sense as a Zone, as does the Southern Flinders Region, which I had the pleasure to officially open some years back. There’s not much call for a Northern Flinders Region yet, but this may become necessary if those who insist the Earth is cooling prove correct.

When you examine the fine new Barossa map, it becomes very clear that the Barossa is a distinct valley that runs north-south between the Barossa Ranges on the eastern side, and the ridge that runs from Kalimna in the north, south through Greenock to Gomersal on the western side. The enormous, monocultural tax-dodge vineyards recently planted outside the Valley on the western flats around Sandy Creek have nothing to do with the Barossa or its flavours. This should be Adelaide Plains. Similarly, the upland vineyards in the chaotic network of ranges and valleys to the east of the Barossa Range have nothing in common with the Barossa, other than that Valley’s propensity to use their finer fruit to improve its own, which they can still do without losing the precious Barossa moniker. The dodgy intellect of this is revealed by the new map. They made their Barossa far too big. Dumb.

THE HILL OF GRACE VINEYARD, MUCH IMPROVED BY PRUE HENSCHKE SINCE MILTON WORDLEY TOOK THIS PHOTOGRAPH. IS THIS IN THE BAROSSA VALLEY?

The South Mount Lofty Ranges are a continuous geological feature that extends to Cape Jervis, and yet the Southern Fleurieu is not included in the Mount Lofty Ranges Zone, while Clare is. Dumb.

The McLaren Vale Region is part of the Fleurieu Zone. It sensibly drew most of its boundary according to its geology and topography, following the escarpment formed by the Willunga fault line from the Victory pub to Kangarilla. The western boundary is sensibly the sea. Part of the reason this region stretches north across the Onkaparinga to include Glenthorne Farm and Chateau Reynella is to protect them from housing development. Which will look really dumb if governments and owners continue with their nefarious villa rash. Which the intellectually decrepit Rann government has just permitted to occur in letting Constellation Brands rip out John Reynell's heritage vineyard which had been in full premium wine production for 161 years. Forty-one tiny apartments will replace it. The winemakers of McLaren Vale can take a deep bow for permitting this to happen. And Onkaparinga Mayor Lorraine Rosenberg, who will eventually fall on her own fork. Show Lorraine a hill, and she'll immediately want somebody to put a shed on it.

In the meantime, there's an unholy row brewing between Jane "Spock" Lomax-Smith, the Minister for Tourism, and the McLaren Vale Grape Wine And Tourism Association over the naming of the Fleurieu, the Peninsula which McLaren Vale sits upon. The McLVGWATA should not really be claiming any holier-than-thou rights to naming intelligence until it cleans that idiotic acronym up. But the winesmiths of the Vales want the Fleurieu name officially changed to Fleurieu and McLaren Vale, which J-Lo the Vulcan will not abide.

Consider Doug Govan of The Victory Hotel. His two tiny Rudderless Vineyards behind his mighty pub sit astride the boundary separating McLaren Vale from Southern Fleurieu. This line should logically follow the creek, flowing just south of his pub down through Cactus Gulch to the Gulf. Instead, the appellation line actually divides one of his three tiny Lots, as delineated on the Hundred and Section maps determining ownership.

Doug’s dog Swahili could have worked that one out.

Just as we constantly adjust electoral boundaries to suit demographic changes, and rename electorates, surely we can begin correcting some of this really stupid mess.

VICTORY HOTEL PUBLICAN, DOUG GOVAN, TOOK THIS PHOTOGRAPH OF HIS BELOVED SWAHILI, WHO IS CONSIDERING THE BOUNDARY OF McLAREN VALE AND FLEURIEU. SWAHILI IS IN McLAREN VALE. THE COOPERS SIGN IS IN SOUTHERN FLEURIEU.

GOVAN'S GREATEST VICTORY

Victory Hotel publican Douglas Govan fondles his pot of gold at his Rudderless Vineyard behind his Victory Hotel on Sellicks Hill, McLaren Vale, South Australia. That's another view of the vineyard, above, with the Gulf St. Vincent in the background.

SPEECH for the OPENING of the NEW BAR AND CELLAR at the VICTORY HOTEL, Sunday 30th November 2008

by PHILIP WHITE

Thanks Douglas.

I’m going to talk awhile about the nature of names as much as those very special qualities which mark the nature of a successful public house.

Public houses are places people attend to enjoy indulgent luxuries and wickedness they cannot otherwise procure because they’re travelling – it’s too long; or luxuries and behaviours which would simply not be tolerated at home – it’s too hard.

Such naughtiness ranges from extreme gushings of bullshit to spilling stuff on the carpet, through, until recently, to burning holes in the carpet, to the more traditional outrage of using the carpet through friction to burn holes in elbows and knees while scorching the gluteus maximus muscles of somebody else.

Metaphorically, of course.

Given the economies of the day, the publican varyingly tolerates, facilitates, and even encourages such behaviours, and the cleverest among publicans are those which can routinely manage all three, whilst keeping a clean nose, and ensuring those customers, and sometimes also those regular customers’ partners in life, reoffend with impunity.

While beer has been popular for some 8000 years, we don’t know who first made its drinking something that should be supervised by publicans in public houses, but I’m sure it didn’t take long.

There are references to such establishments in Chinese literature several thousands of years back, but one of the earliest writings to make pubs sound rather fascinating to the young Philip White came from the Gospel According To Matthew. It was read to the congregation of the Presbyterians at Childers, in the mountains of east Victoria, by Philip’s Father, the president of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, in about 1958.

And it referred to wine, not beer.

As if to prepare me for Shakespeare, who plied his thirty thousand word vocabulary at Stratford while the royal scribes across in London and Oxbridge were limited to five thousand as they worked on the King James Version of the Bible, my Father the preacher of course used that translation.

“But whereunto shall I liken this generation?” Jesus asks.

“It is like unto children sitting in the markets, and calling unto their fellows. And saying, ‘We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned unto you, and ye have not lamented’.

“For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He hath a devil!’.

“The son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Behold a man gluttonous, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners’.”

1,950 years later there was an essay competition.

“I won it with an entry under my own name”, Douglas Govan told me earlier this year.

“And I also came third with another entry under another name.

“With the winnings I bought a Sony amplifier. I had no speakers or anything. Just the amp. I’d turn it on and marvel at the little green light. There was a Japanese kid at school with big stereo headphones. He let me try them on and once I was in there – like wow! Stereo! Suddenly I understood. I got right into music. I got into some serious platter-spinning. The wheels of steel. Within a few years I was running nightclubs, and eventually made enough money to buy a pub.”

So Douglas has been here since 1989, doing renovations and rebuilds in brave, tasteful waves, which are directly relative, of course, to the numbers of sinners, apostles, and sons of gods he entertains here.

Before the mighty rebuild we celebrate today, Douglas’s last big spend was on three bed and breakfast establishments just up the hill. While these are highly convenient and polite, I think somewhere in there, back with the gamblers, Douglas should build a copy of the Great Bed Of Ware (see picture at bottom of this page), which at three metres by four in acreage, was famous for holding around twenty passengers at a time. In Billy the Shakespaw’s day this mighty cot resided in another great pub, the White Hart Inn in Hertfordshire, and the Bard referred to it in Twelfth Night, where Sir Andrew Aguecheek is urged to write down enough lies to fill a sheet 'big enough for the bed of Ware'.

Speaking of the gluteus maximus muscles, the surname Aguecheek reflects not on the bearer’s capacity to score carpetburns upon his arse, but is a slightly more polite version of quakebuttock, a popular term for the sweaty, quivering cowards of that day.

Built by Hertfordshire carpenter Jonas Fosbrooke in about 1590, the bed’s four grand posts are carved with the names of some of those lucky enough to have sailed in her. She went to The Saracen’s Head, another Ware inn, until 1870, and now lies restored but tragically unused in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Which brings us to another great pub, the Boar’s Head. As Christian beliefs overtook pagan customs in Europe, the presentation of a boar's head at Christmas came to symbolize the triumph of Christ over sin. So young Will Shakepaws appropriately named the favourite watering hole of that corpulent and profane reprobate Sir John Falstaff The Boar’s Head.

This pub was at Southwark, where, coincidentally, lived the German woodworkers who'd helped build the Great Bed Of Ware. The real Boar's Head had been owned by the warrior John Fastolf, who in hearty simile to the playwrite’s name Shake Spear, (which he often signed Shakes Paw – a walloper of one’s cods) became John Fall Staff, a character quite the opposite of John the Baptist, who neither ate nor drank but did carry a staff til Salome secured the falling of his head.

The Boar's Head Inn, outside the City of London's medieval walls on the northeast, had long been a venue for play-acting in previous decades, and Shakespeare easily modified it for use as the vehicle in which Head Bore, Fall Staff famously fell asleep, drunk.

In Richard IV, Falstaff’s there drinking at two oclock in the morning with prince Henry.

enter BARDOLPH, running

"O, my lord, my lord! the sheriff with a most monstrous watch is at the door."

HOSTESS

"The sheriff and all the watch are at the door: they are come to search the house. Shall I let them in?"

It appears that the Sheriff’s looking for Falstaff over the little matter of a big stack of stolen money.

Prince Henry sends Falstaff to hide behind the arras, which, like denim, the characteristic cloth of Nimes - de Nimes - was an abbreviation for the rich tapestries and brocades made in the French town of Arras. The word came to refer to such tapestries, which usually bore heroic images of hunts or great battles, and which were hung in pubs to hide drafty unused doorways, annexes or snugs.

“Go, hide thee behind the arras”, the Prince tells Sir John.

As I’m talking about names, their meanings, and the way these change, Hardy’s or BRL or Galaxy or Heavens Above - or whoever they're currently called - that supplied this beautiful Tassie fizz we're gurgling should shout Douglas an arras as he now has the perfect location for one in his sumptuous new cellars.

Prince Henry assures the Sheriff that his quarry – as fat as butter – is not in the pub, so the sheriff leaves.

“This oily rascal is known as well as St Paul's” says the future king. “Go, call him forth”.

But Falstaff’s fast asleep behind the arras, snorting like a horse. They go through his pockets, looking for the money, but find only the day’s account from the pub.

Item, A capon (a chook),. . 2s. 2d.
Item, Sauce,. . . 4d.
Item, Sack (that’s sherry), two gallons, 5s. 8d.
Item, Anchovies and sack after supper, 2s. 6d.
Item, Bread, a halfpenny.

“O monstrous!” yells the Prince. “but one half-penny-worth of bread to this intolerable deal of sack!"

Sir John drinks in many public houses, and handily repairs to one called The Garter Inn after having been thrown into the Thames.

“Have I lived to be carried in a basket, like a barrow of butcher's offal, and to be thrown in the Thames?” he roars in the MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR. “Go fetch me a quart of sack; put a toast in't”.

In those days they served steaming hot sherry in large mugs, with a crouton or two floating on top. The sherry, which was yellow and sweet, and made before the invention of flor fino, was often so stinky and cloudy they also stirred in an egg or two to clarify it, much as we clarify consomme or indeed wines in barrel.

“Let me pour in some sack to the Thames water; for my belly's as cold as if I’d swallowed snowballs for pills to cool the reins. Call her in” Falstaff orders of the barmaid. But when Mistress Quickly arrives, he roars again “Take away these chalices. Go brew me a pottle of sack finely”.

“With eggs, sir?” she asks.

“Simple of itself” he gurgles; “I'll have no pullet-sperm in my brewage”.

“A good sherris sack hath a two-fold operation in it” Sir John trumpeted. “It ascends me into the brain; dries me there all the foolish and dull and curdy vapours which environ it; makes it apprehensive, quick, forgetive, full of nimble fiery and delectable shapes, which, delivered o'er to the voice, the tongue, which is the birth, becomes excellent wit. The second property of your excellent sherris is, the warming of the blood; which, before cold and settled, left the liver white and pale, which is the badge of pusillanimity and cowardice; but the sherris warms it and makes it course from the inwards to the parts extreme: it illumineth the face, which as a beacon gives warning to all the rest of this little kingdom, man, to arm; and then the vital commoners and inland petty spirits muster me all to their captain, the heart, who, great and puffed up with this retinue, doth any deed of courage; and this valour comes of sherris. So that skill in the weapon is nothing without sack, for that sets it a-work; and learning a mere hoard of gold kept by a devil, till sack commences it and sets it in act and use. Hereof comes it that Prince Harry is valiant; for the cold blood he did naturally inherit of his father, he hath, like lean, sterile and bare land, manured, husbanded and tilled with excellent endeavour of drinking good and good store of fertile sherris, that he is become very hot and valiant. If I had a thousand sons, the first humane principle I would teach them should be, to forswear thin potations and to addict themselves to sack.”

A few hundred years later The South Australian in 1845 praised “the extensive and rich valley of McLaren … where almost the whole of the country inns visited on this trip are neatly and cleanly kept … everywhere the traveller meets with civility and attention … and there was no lack of good viands”. Going by the amount of sherry grape varieties then planted hereabouts, these abundant good viands must have included a fair potage of Sir John’s peculier petrol.

But this Victory was then not yet built.

I’d always thought, like hundreds of other pubs throughout the British Empire, that this establishment was named after the mighty vessel upon which Lord Nelson asked his mate Hardy for “a bit more tongue” then up and died.

I liked this possibility, because the Victory had been more successfully employed off the Portuguese coast in the battle of Cabo de São Vincente – Cape St Vincent - on 18 January, 1797, under Admiral Sir John Jervis, who thence took the title Lord St Vincent and became First Lord of The Admiralty, in which position he awarded passports to the French ships which sailed from his Channel to this coast, captained by Nicholas Baudin, under the sponsorship of Charles Pierre Claret, the Comte de Fleurieu, Senator, member of the Institute of France, former Minister of Marine, governor of the palate of Versailles, and intendant-general of Napoleon's household.

Baudin, of course, named this water Golfe Josephine, after Bonaparte’s mistress, unaware that by the time his charts got back to Paris Boney’d swapped Josephine for Marie Louise.

But before the French cartographers changed Baudin’s maps, Flinders named this glittering stretch of water St Vincent after his sponsor. It’s perchance that Baudin's maps reside in the Bibliotech, opposite Willy’s Wine Bar in the Rue Petit Champs in Paris. Henri Paul, the ex SAS man who drove Princess Diana to her death, drank, sometimes heavily, in Willy’s as he lived directly upstairs and always left his Mini Cooper S parked crooked on the footpath outside. Diana of course was a Spencer, and it was her ancestor, George John, the Second Earl Spencer and first Lord of the Admiralty, after whom Flinders named the other Gulf, which Baudin called Bonaparte.

It’s simply opportune that Vincent was not just the patron of viticulturers, but also of vinegar makers, lost stuff, and schoolgirls.

When Douglas named his wine brand Rudderless, he reinforced my naive belief that this Victory was named for Nelson’s vessel after its great Victory at the Cabo St Vincente, around which smart caravels for centuries carried sherris sack from Spain to the likes of Falstaff and the lads in The Boar’s Head, just as this gulf (St Vincent) and this cape (Cape Jervis - at the toe of The Fleurieu) see today’s enormous wine exports sail off for the public houses of London.

The names of Australian public houses often referred to things royal. If the King sought to go to war, he’d have to build a navy, so he planted Royal Oak, or Kingswood. The Great Eastern and Great Western hotels, of which Australia has many, were named after the biggest vessels of their day, both built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who was the consultant engineer on the Goolwa – Victor Harbour railway, here on our beautiful Fleurieu Peninsula. The Exeter was named after that temple of enlightenment, Exeter Hall in London, where Wilberforce held his world-changing rallies against slavery, the first emancipationists met, and the meetings for the establishment of the South Australia Company were held. Rising Sun Hotels, which are everywhere, either face east or sit on eastern pavements. This pub, indeed, would make a perfect Rising Sun.

It took Chris Davies, of Willunga, to set me right about this Victory, and point out that the old coach road that passes outside here from Sellicks Hill to Pages Flat Road was originally named The Victory Road, not after any vessel, but after the victory of Aldinga Council Chairman John Norman who was instrumental in pushing this road through to Myponga and Yankalilla.

The ceremony to open the road was held on Tuesday, March 15th 1859 at this new inn, and at the celebratory dinner which ensued, this great public house was named Norman’s Victory in the hope that it would be a perpetual commemoration of the councillor’s achievement.

So, in the spirit of Sir John Falstaff, and his foremost Australian equivalent, the NSW Premier Sir John Robertson, who upon visiting these shores in 1860 drily observed

"None of the men who in this country have left footprints behind them have been cold water men",

I urge you to pack your pottles with sack, put a toast on it, and drink one to the gulf the Kaurna called Wongayerlo - the place where the sun disappears – and to all publicans and sinners, to Douglas Govan and his mighty Victory, where each day the sun arises, to all who sail in her, and in honest expectation that if Jesus came back today, the first thing he’d do would gather the lads up from their clambake down there on Galilee, and wander up the dusty Victory track for a few long loud ones in this beautiful new cellar and bar.

To the Victory!

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The Victory's Rudderless!

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by PHILIP WHITE
This was first published in The Independent Weekly in August 2008

“Fire authorities sift through Victory Hotel ruins” blared my browser. Not The Vic! Had Bacchus torched one of our best pubs in exchange for my glee over the demise of Starbucks?

No, it wasn’t Douglas Govan’s Victory, that hallowed thirst emporium on Sellick’s Hill. It was the Vic in Brisbane that Bacchus blitzed. Along with all those Starbucks. I mean, bad luck, Brisbane, but… Whew.

There was an essay competition. “I won it with an entry under my own name”, says Douglas. “And I also came third with another entry under another name. With the winnings I bought a Sony amplifier. I had no speakers or anything. Just the amp. I’d turn it on and marvel at the little green light. There was a Japanese kid at school with big stereo headphones. He let me try them on and once I was in there – like wow! Stereo! Suddenly I understood. I got right into music. I got into some serious platter-spinning. The wheels of steel. Within a few years I was running nightclubs, and eventually made enough money to buy a pub.”

….just in case you were wondering where great publicans come from….

And Douglas is a great publican. The Vic, which he’s owned since 1989, is the most successful and respected public house and victualler in the McLaren Vale region, if not the whole of the Fleurieu. Now it also has three wicked little B&Bs, which together add up to something along the lines of the Great Bed Of Ware, which held around twenty passengers at a time in the White Hart Inn in Hertfordshire, as reported in Billy Shakespaw’s Twelfth Night. Another great pub.

All of which says something. The Vales generally had good pubs. In 1845 The South Australian praised “the extensive and rich valley of McLaren….almost the whole of the country inns visited on this trip are neatly and cleanly kept…everywhere the traveller meets with civility and attention…and there was no lack of good viands”.

The Vic did disappoint me, once. A decade back, I stupidly went down there for a restorative steak on New Year’s Day. Came in a bit late and shaky, but there stood Douglas on the lawn, up to his ankles in beer cans and butts. Incredulous. It had been a large night. “You gotta be joking!” he said when I asked to be fed. “Take a look around. If you’d eat anything I cooked today you’d be mad. Look at me! Go back to The Barn Whitey.” Even Lord Nelson had his bad day on the mighty vessel which gave this inn its name.

Since then, The Vic has well and truly made up for that brief, forgiveable lapse. Nowhere will you buy better, fresher, simple seafood, or more succulent steaks. Try that eye fillet. (No pun intended, m’Lud). And then there’s the cellar. Oh my.

Pubs with great wine lists? The Exeter. The Wheatsheaf in Thebarton. But the Victory’s is the best. You may know another; it’s not jumping to my mind. Take a tumble down into The Vic’s cellar, and you’re suddenly far too deep behind the lines: out in the nether regions beyond thirst being your major excuse: greed takes over. Eat your plastic. Retreat.

See. You can’t. You look about: Castagna. Cascabel. Chablis. Chevalier. Cullen. Greenock Creek. All the best, impossible to procure pinots. Wines from temples so great and rare and secret that I never mention them.

And now The Vic’s getting bigger. Douglas has built a huge new cellar, which will permit him to display for sale some of the various thousands of premium rarities he’s been collecting and maturing. There’ll be a new verandah for smokers, with a view clear down to somewhere near Antarctica. So what’s the catch? Well, the front bar’s about to get a lot bigger, too. That’s the price you pay.

Then there’s the little matter of the vineyards, one either side of the pub - one in McLaren Vale; one in Southern Fleurieu - planted from cuttings from Douglas’s favourite vineyards. Follow the track between them for five minutes and you’re in the ABC Range in the Northern Flinders. Literally. Same geological group: the fossils, and the vegetation. Come back down the gorge, and again you’ve got that view over the Gulf St Vincent, patron of viticulturers, vinegar makers, lost stuff, and schoolgirls.

Given the nature of The Victory, these wines are sold under the Rudderless brand, which has nothing to do Kevin. Made by Justin McNamee at Samuel’s Gorge, they’re something else, too. Shiraz, grenache, graciano, malbec, mataro and viognier, growing in sparse dirt that tastes nearly as good as the pub food. Seriously. I’ve tasted it all. A smorgasbord.

And since I’ve been snide about Starbucks, try The Victory’s coffee. They’ll even make a castrato. All you get is the squeak.

OOPS! CHEERS FOR VICTORY

(Letters, The Independent Weekly, August 15-21, 2008)

Philip White (IW August 8) is wrong when he asserts it was Lord Nelson’s mighty vessel which gave the Victory inn its name. Local history can be a fragile thing.

To wander down the old coach road that meanders its way over the Sellicks Hill Range from Pages Flat Road to Sellicks Hill is to walk what was once called The Victory Road. In 1859 the then long-disputed question of the route for a road from Noarlunga to Myponga and Yankalilla was finally settled. For his part in that outcome, Aldinga Council Chairman John Norman was considered a local hero, and the result of his incessant exertions, a grand triumph.

The ceremony to open the road was held on Tuesday, March 15^th at the new inn on that road and a celebratory dinner was held there that night. The inn was named Norman’s Victory in the hope that it would be a perpetual commemoration.

To shorten the name of this great little pub to the Victory, though somewhat sloppy, can be seen as a term of endearment.

Chris Davies,

Willunga.

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