brewery

In a time when almost every town had a cordial and soft drink manufacturer, J. J. Burke was a cordial manufacturer in Wondai, a town in the South Burnett region 241 km northwest of Brisbane. The business changed hands subsequently and under the ownership of one L. C. Sawtell became known as the South Burnett Aerated Water Works. The Sawtell family had soft drink factories in Wondai, Kingaroy, Murgon, and Goomeri. A newspaper article in 1927 records the sale of the Wondai lease to a Mr. Geo. Stewart. However, according to Queensland State Library records, Geo. was actually Gordon Stewart, who sold the business to his brother-in-law Sam Eupene in 1947. The company eventually became known as Eugene's. It was taken over by Errol Young in October 1971. In the 1920s Sawtell’s opened a branch in Maryborough. Both the Sawtell and the South Burnett operations continued at least into the late 1990s. Sawtell’s was a significant brand in Queensland and also produced fruit juices for a time. Some of their soft drinks had unusual names: orange was SOS and lemon was Monsa. Source: australianfoodtimeline.com.au/cordial-manufacturers-at-wo...

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Emil Sick bought the Salem Brewery Association in October 1943. For more information, click on the link below! brewerygems.com/salem.htm

It was the ‘great flood’ of 1893 that set the standard for the Brisbane River. This event is memorable, among other things, for destroying the Victoria Bridge and the Indooroopilly Railway Bridge and for stranding three ships in the Brisbane Botanic Gardens. In the case of beer production, the 1893 flood was most interesting because of its conspicuous effect on several of the many breweries which then operated in and around Brisbane. In particular, it inflicted major damage on one of the city’s biggest beer producers, the West End Brewery. Of the five breweries in Brisbane at the beginning of 1893, the West End suffered the most from the devastating flood in February of that year. At the height of the flood, the water had risen up to the windows on the second storey of the tower, and all the dwellings in the immediate neighborhood were completely or nearly submerged. When the waters receded, the extent of the damage was revealed; the brewery tower remained, but the surrounding timber buildings were completely wrecked. The brewery had been surrounded by water during an earlier flood in March 1890, but compared to the 1893 event, that of 1890 was only a minor inconvenience. A curious side-effect of the 1893 flood was an increase in drunkenness at South Brisbane and certain other places, due to the kegs of beer—said to number 500 hogsheads—that floated away from the West End Brewery. Some were taken to the railway embankment, the nearest high ground, and broached. Others washed ashore at the foot of Bowen Terrace, downstream on the other side of the river. The resulting scenes of misconduct were said to be ‘disgusting in the extreme’. Men were seen ‘drinking all they could and then quarrelling for possession of the cask containing the balance.’ Source: brewsnews.com.au/queenslands-breweries-in-the-1893-flood/