“They are among the Best Workers, Learning the Ways of a Vineyard Quickly”: Aboriginal People, Drinking, and Labor in the Early Australian Wine Industry

Studies of the impact of European forms of alcohol on Indigenous peoples tend to focus on health and social problems arising from overconsumption. This article takes a new approach by, first, parsing wine from the non-culturally specific treatment of all forms of alcohol in the lives of Aboriginal Australians; and, second, considering Aboriginal employment in Australian wine production since the early nineteenth century alongside these peoples’ exclusion from the late-twentieth century rise of an Australian “good life” of democratized wine drinking practices. By re-entangling these elements of Aboriginal lives in settler colonial society, we reveal an unknown facet of Aboriginal economic contribution, highlight relationships between Aboriginal- and Italian-Australians, and challenge negative stereotypes that Aboriginal Australians are unable to control themselves in the presence of alcohol.