How different it is now to back then.  

All picking was done by hand - mostly by workers who would flood into this area from Queensland, where they would have worked cutting sugar cane.

They were mostly Italians with some Spaniards.

The population of Griffith would grow by over one-third, with many of them accompanied by their families. They would arrive in late December and leave in early May.

Most of the horticultural farms were called fruit salads as they grew apricots, peaches of all varieties, prunes, plums, nectarines, apples and pears, among others, and they would also help to harvest them. Their main focus though was picking the grapes on a contract basis per ton at which they could make big money.

Most farmers had accommodation for them but it was very basic to say the least. There were also two or three private boarding houses where the single men could obtain bed and board.

Grapes were handpicked into a variety of tins, about four gallons (20 litres) in size.

The farmer would spread the tins along the rows and when they were filled, they had to be manually heave each bucket into the grape tray on the truck. 

The farmer would tip them out and then throw the tins into the next row.

Trucks would carry between two and five tons (not tonnes), depending on their size.

It was sticky work, made worse sometimes if farmers failed to clean the long grass mostly paspalum, under the vines. There were no herbicides in those days.

The farmer would then transport them to the winery where the load was weighed and credited to them.

There were no tip trucks in those days - the truck would stop opposite the platform, roughly the same height as the truck, and then the grapes had to be manually unloaded onto the platform using a large fork where a winery worker would push the grapes through a hole down to the crusher.

Once the grapes had fermented in concrete tanks, the juice was pumped out into underground cement storage tanks and the fermenters, as they were called, had to be manually cleaned of the skins, stalks and seeds using a big shovel, readying for the next lot.

At the end of the season, the pickers and their families would have a big celebration before heading off back to Queensland for the sugar cane harvest.

The wine industry at that time was in its infancy. De Bortoli for example crushed 900 tons and built is up to 1900 tons. Penfolds had the largest winery, along with McWilliams which had wineries at Hanwood, Beelbangera and Yenda.

The total crush then was around 4000 tons. It is now over 300,000 tons.

The largest grower back then harvested around 178 tons.

The vintage then went from February to the end of April, now it is all over in five to six weeks, starting late January.