AustLit

'During an era of expanding social inclusion in the 1960s and 1970s, Australians increasingly drank more wine than at any previous time in colonial or national history. These wines were made in new styles and consumed in accordance with new habits across gender and class. The morphology of one of Australia’s most popular “introduction wines” of this period, Lindeman’s Ben Ean Moselle, reveals the emergence of new elements of national character. From being advertised to women in the late 1960s as “just right”, Ben Ean’s cultural messaging in the 1970s flirted with general appeal to men and women of the new middle class: “anywhere, anytime”. Then, by the mid-1980s, the ascendancy of this light, semi-sweet table wine was halted by the emergence of an elitism in which new professionals favoured consumer products of provenanced distinction. The arc of Ben Ean’s rise and fall symbolises an informalisation and subsequent reformalisation of values, conventions and identities during a time of social and cultural flux.'  (Publication abstract)

'As one of Australia's foremost historians of Aboriginal Australia, Richard Broome's account of the principal Aboriginal activist organisation in twentieth century Victoria is presented with great skill, and with the profound respect due to its subjects. As Broome explains, another history of the Victorian Aborigines Advancement League (VAAL) was published thirty years ago that did not make use of the organisation's archive. Access to the VAAL's extensive archive is at the core of Broome's stated intention to portray Aboriginal agency in activism. The chronological narrative is contextualised with interviews, and comparisons with the North American black rights movement.' (Introduction)