Interview with David Dunstan [transcript] Interviewer: Rob Linn

Dr David Dunstan was born in New York to Australian parents in 1950. His father Keith was a foreign correspondent for the Herald and Weekly Times and his grandfather was managing director of the Herald. He developed an interest in wine from his father and his uncle Bill Dunstan who bought wine from all over Australia and had large stocks of 1960s wine. He did home bottling. His father was in demand as a publicist and writer for the wine industry and befriended Len Evans. He talks of early memories of Rutherglen and Browns. Sam Bennels book "Journey to wine in Victoria". He studied at Caulfield Grammar School. His father has written over 200 books and was a byline journalist from the 19040s. David Dunstan studied history at Melbourne University. He bought a lot of European wine from Frank de Marchis' Franeva Cellars when he closed own. He married Paula in 1973 when he was still a student. They bought a house at Windsor near Chapel St and he wrote a weekly column for the Herald from 1979 to 1984. Don Murphy wrote "Classic Wines of Australia" which helped define the Australian wine industry. He talks about great wines of the 1970s. In 1978 he was a full time history tutor at Melbourne university and was offered a job as wine writer at the Age newspaper. He wanted to do a national history of the wine industry and started collecting information and doing interviews of Colin Haselgrove, John Brown, Murray Tyrrell, Ray Kidd, Mick Morris, Peter Lehmann and others. This led to a first book "Morris of Rutherglen". Wine writing involved a lot of travel and too much of his time so he stopped in 1984. He completed his PhD in 1983 and was given a job at Deakin University as senior tutor in Australian Studies. He also worked for the Victorian Heritage Buildings Council from 1984 to 1993 and had many buildings recognised. He moved to the Museum of Victoria and was very involved in the heritage movement. He and Nick Walker wrote "History of Wine in Victoria" in 1993 and plan a second edition. He went to the Exhibition building for three years in order to write its history. In 1997 he moved to the National Centre for Australian Studies to teach tourism. In 1986 his father bought a property on Mornington Peninsula and they made wine until 1997. He talks about the National Wine Museum in Adelaide, wine tourism, Bob Hawke ending price fixing by the wine industry in 1974 and people such as Roy Moorfield, Brian Croser, and Len Evans

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