Exactly why William Oliver, his wife Elizabeth and their two children left their home in the Scottish border town of Samieston and set sail for the distant shores of South Australia is a mystery. Their destination was a fledgling colony, with an immigrant population of less than 15-thousand and the journey to get there was a treacherous one. But William Oliver was not a man to be deterred by difficulties.

So determined was he to start a new life that on the 2nd of October 1839, he bought an ‘unseen’ parcel of land in this foreign place and days later hustled his family aboard the 360 tonne sailing ship ‘The Delhi’ bound for South Australia.The journey was an unremarkable one. Like many of the immigrants of this time the family slept in close quarters and survived on a diet of dry biscuits, preserved meat, rice, suet and potatoes.

When William died at the ripe old age of 76, he was buried beside Elizabeth in a marble crypt in the family cemetery on the northern edge of the Taranga property. He left behind seven children (three were to die young from infectious diseases), 18 horses, 38 head of cattle, 400 ‘fat sheep’, three pigs, poultry, wagons ploughs and a seed sower. Most importantly perhaps, his estate included four thousand gallons of ‘good wine’.

Today, the Oliver family has expanded on those first two holdings and the art of growing grapes has moved into a high-tech world of computerised soil monitoring systems and state-of-the-art irrigation technology. Also, the varietal mix has changed over the years. The Shiraz, Grenache and Mataro are still grown, now we see emerging varieties like Fiano, Vermentino, Tempranillo, Sagrantino & Mencia gaining a foothold. When it comes to producing their premium quality wine grapes, the Olivers still rely on good, old gut-instinct, that only comes with a lifelong knowledge of the land and a love of wine that runs through their veins.