Dr Don Martin

Dr Don Martin was born in Grenfell New South Wales on 7 July 1911. His father was a farm labourer and gold miner. He moved to Brookvale and won a scholarship to Sydney University and studied Botany, winning a University medal. He joined the CSIRO in the Empire Marketing Board in 1934 at 4 pounds 10 shillings a week.He retired from the CSIRO in 1976 as officer in charge of the Tasmanian regional body and became interested in the history of horticulture. He worked with Claudio Alcorso to develop a vineyard at Moorilla. Claudio was an industrialist who was mainly interested in the arts. Moorilla began in the late 1950s and grew several varieties of grapes. In the early 1970s he went to Europe and North America. The Tasmanian wine industry took off in the late 1960s. In 1975 he was on the wine committee at the Royal Agricultural Society and continued until 2001. He talks about the people in the industry