Hunter Valley property

For more than 30,000 years, Aboriginal Australians lived in the country that became the Hunter Valley wine region. The Wonnarua people, with the Worimi away to the north and the Awabakal away to the south, made a trading route between the Coquun (Hunter) Valley and the harbour that is now Sydney Harbour.

European settlement in Sydney and New South Wales began late in the 1700s as a British penal colony, and wine-making in the valley begins with that settlement. In 1797 a British lieutenant, John Shortland, came upon the Hunter River by accident while he was searching for escaped convicts. Before long the valley was supplying timber and coal for the steamships that ran out of Sydney. Permian rocks across the lower valley formed while the land lay beneath a shallow estuary, and the coal seams they left behind fed the region's growing population in the 19th century.

In 1820 the land prospector John Howe made a track through the bush from Sydney to the overland country that is now the Lower Hunter Valley proper. The Putty Road of today, running between Windsor and Singleton, follows the same line, and is a main route for wine tourists driving up from Sydney.

Plantings in coastal areas around Sydney did not survive the humidity and wet weather, and spring frosts held back vineyards further west. Those setbacks left the northern country toward the Hunter as the new colony's wine region, almost by default. Vines went into the valley in the early 19th century, making it one of Australia's earliest wine regions.

Through the middle and later 19th century the valley's wine industry expanded, helped by its hold on the Sydney market. The government of New South Wales brought in rules that put heavy duties on wine from elsewhere, including Victoria and South Australia, and a trade network linked the valley to Sydney. After World War I, many returning Australian veterans received grants of land in the valley, and plantings rose for a time. Then the worldwide Great Depression and a run of hail storms across 1929 and 1930 led many growers to give up their vines.

The Riverina region now produces more New South Wales wine than the Hunter does. Demand from Sydney drinkers keeps much of the industry going, and tourism plays a part in the economy.

Australia's wine appellation system sets out a Hunter Valley wine zone that takes in the entire catchment of the Hunter and the streams flowing into it. Inside the zone, the Hunter valley is almost as large, and it includes most of the wine-producing areas. It leaves out Newcastle's urban area and nearby coast, some national parks, and land that once belonged to Mudgee Shire.

The valley is best known for its wineries and its coal industry. Its towns and villages are scattered across it, and the four cities are Lake Macquarie, Newcastle, Maitland and Cessnock. Other main centres include Singleton, Scone, Muswellbrook, Raymond Terrace, Kurri Kurri, Gloucester and Dungog.

The climate is humid subtropical, with maritime influence from the Pacific Ocean, and the valley is among the hottest and wettest wine regions in Australia. Summer days often climb past 21.1 °C (70.0 °F), and winter averages sit near 14 °C (57.2 °F). Between October and April the region receives more than two thirds of its yearly rain, and in those months the afternoon relative humidity averages 49% in the Lower Hunter and 43% in the Upper Hunter.