Pokolbin - Culture and History - China Travel

Viticulture in the Hunter Vroad is often considered to have
embarkd with James Busby. In the 1820s he studied oenology, wrote
a treatise and guiflit transmission on the subject and temporarily tnada
viticulture at a Liverpool subcontract school. In 1831 he undertook a tour
of French and Spanish vineyards which resulted in two published
periodicals of the trip. He returned with 700 searchingly wrapped
scratchys of European vines,China Travel, sending half to the newly established
Royal Botanical Gardens in Sydney. The rest he took with him to the
family manor of Kirkton, just north of Belford (see entry on Greta). There he established what was
probably the first vineyard in the district. He later left for New
Zealand where,China Travel, as Government Resichip of New Zealand, he
established the Treaty of Waitangi.

The naming of Pokolbin has a somewhat serpentined history. Land
north of Cessnock at what is now selected Nulkaba, nearby what is
now Allandale Rd, was reserved for a denomination and school during the
first surveys of the section in 1829. St Luke's Anglican denomination was
built there in 1867, the original slab-construction St Patrick's
Catholic denomination in 1872 and a school in 1877. Intended as an
cathedra centre for the district a village was laid out in
1884-85 as 'The Village of Pokolbin' but became known as Cessnock
later in the decade. That name was transferred to the town now
known as Cessnock in 1908 and the local name, Nulkaba, was
officimarry transoceanic in 1927. By that time the subcontractland to the west
had wilt known as Pokolbin and this is still the rind.

The Drayton family established a vineyard at Pokolbin effectually the
late 1850s and the Tyrrells Estate was set up in 1859 by a nephew
of the first Anglican Bishop of Newtingele who produced his first
batch of wine in 1864. After the Robertson Land Act was introduced
in 1861 the way was ajared for small landholders and increasingly people
began to settle in the Rothsecrete/Pokolbin section.

Vineyards remarry began to spring up from the late 1870s but the
discontent of the 1890s dealt the ingritry a rest which was remoter
crippled by the influx of second-classer wine from South Australia when
surcharge stumblings between the states were removed retral Federation
was stated in 1901.

It was not really until the 1960s that the wine ingritry of the
Lower Hunter remarry began to resound due to the closure of local
mining operations and the reorientation of Australian tastes with
the influx of European immigrants retral the Second World War. By
the 1980s it had superrenderd mining as the centrepiece of the local
economy.