A Long Stride. Nicholas Morgan
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Calcutta, Karachi, Penang, Singapore, and ‘many other ports’. Of all these markets, Australia was the most important.46
According to correspondence of John Blaikie the company had been doing business in Australia with the Bank of New South Wales since at least 1867. It is also possible that having left the business in Kilmarnock, Robert Walker travelled to Australia in the 1860s with the intention of developing the trade there.47 Sadly it’s hard to disaggregate details of the export side of the Walker business from the surviving records of the 1860s to 1880s, so we have only a fragmentary picture for the most part. However, given the prodigious sales already achieved by 1880, and the sustained export growth that was to follow, it’s clear that the world beyond the United Kingdom was a key part of Alexander’s vision for his business from the start.
It is quite likely that the earliest shipments of whisky from Kilmarnock to Australia and elsewhere were casks sent on consignment with ships’ captains taking the risk and responsibility for their sale on arrival in port, along with a share of the receipts. Scotch whisky was certainly well established in the colony, and advertised for sale as early as 1832 (and no doubt well before), when ‘superior Scotch whisky’ from Thomson Elmsie & Co, proprietors of the Gilcomston distillery in Aberdeen, was consigned for auction in Sydney. At this point distilling was illegal in New South Wales, yet despite high duties, ‘spirits were abundant’.48 However, it was only following the well-publicised gold strikes of the 1850s in New South Wales and Victoria that Scotch imports visibly increased, just as the laws around exports were to be liberalised in the United Kingdom. Starting in Australia, and then moving through the colonies, Scotch exports grew in line with the mineral wealth and unrestrained appetite for luxury consumables that gold created. In 1847 ‘the only batch of genuine Islay and Campbeltown whisky’ was on sale in Sydney, where demand ‘was great’. In July 1857 hogsheads and quarter casks of ‘Mitchell’s whisky’, ‘Paisley whisky’, ‘Dundas Hill whisky’, Islay and Scotch whisky, plus cases of bottled Islay, Campbeltown and ‘Scotch malt whisky’, were being auctioned in Melbourne, alongside Old Tom and Geneva gins, Hennessy, Martell and a host of other upmarket alcoholic beverages.49 In 1856 Mason Brothers, importers of china, crockery and glassware into Sydney, were advertising ‘fine Scotch malt whisky’; they went on to sell ‘Jamison’s’ Irish whisky, Campbeltown and Fettercairn malt whiskies, ‘Mason’s Old Scotch Malt, specially distilled for the Australian market’, Cameron’s Inverness Whisky, Old Davanah Highland Whisky and ‘the favourite brand’, Macfarlane’s whisky (‘in bottle’), before advertising Walker’s Old Highland Whisky in 1874.50 By 1879 (if not before) they were sole agents for Walker’s in New South Wales, from which point their fates would be closely and occasionally painfully intertwined for well over a decade.51
Mason Brothers had been established in Sydney in 1854 by Robert Mason, who also had mercantile businesses in London (where he resided) and Glasgow, and his brother Gavin.52 They were importers of a wide range of durable domestic goods and ironmongery, and from the 1850s began to develop a business as wine and spirits distributors in New South Wales. Of the three partners resident there, James Cullen, James Gould and David Wilson, Cullen, who had been there since 1870, was a cousin of Alexander Walker, and it may have been this kinship that brought Old Highland Whisky into their portfolio of brands, which also included Sorin cognac, Cork Distilleries Irish Whisky and Gayen’s Schiedam schnapps.53 Robert Walker, described as a ‘merchant’, was still in the city in 1874, and despite illness was involved in some work with Mason’s.54 Unlike the home market, Walker’s whiskies were advertised with increasing frequency in the local press – by Mason Brothers themselves, by hoteliers and retailers, and even in editorials purchased in new magazines like the Bulletin, where witty bon mots were to be found scattered through their pages (‘Favourite study of Solicitor’s Clerks? Walker on whisky bottles’).55 ‘I am still of opinion that you charge us pretty sweetly for this,’ wrote Walker to Cullen; ‘It takes a big slice off the profits.’56 But the market was exceptionally competitive and as in other colonies agents demanded allowances (which they rarely got) for the sort of promotional activity that Walker’s would never have allowed in the home market. Advertising increased, and became more sophisticated (for example, with illustrations of the Old Highland bottle), during and following the Sydney Exhibition of 1880, which saw Walker’s Old Highland Whisky win its first major international award, very quickly heralded not just in the press (‘Walker’s Whisky – Special 1st Prize!’) but also on a foot label added to the bottle.57 These sought-after third-party endorsements, discussed in more detail later, were of huge importance in establishing the reputation of brands in overseas markets, and distinguishing them from the competition.
Mason’s also developed an early sponsorship vehicle for the brand, the Walker Whisky Trophy, donating £300 as prize money for a professional sculling race on the Parramatta River; sculling was a popular sport in Australia with a large following. Won by Elias Laycock, who had professional victories behind him both in Australia and England, the sponsorship was in place, explained Cullen, because ‘something was due to the colony, and they should do what they could to encourage manly sports’. Speaking of his ‘relative’, Mr Walker (who no doubt abhorred such extravagant expenditure) had ‘expressed a regret that he could not be personally present on the occasion but wished it every success’.58 Gibbs, Bright & Co., who were agents for the brand in Victoria, were equally active in growing its sales.59
Medal from the Sydney International Exhibition of 1879-80: ‘Walker’s Whisky - Special 1st Prize!’
Despite occasional losses on shipments, and concerns about the management of Mason Brothers following the death in London of Robert Mason in 1881, the Australian business remained of critical importance.60 In 1879 Walker had launched a new brand there, ‘Glencairn’, in bulk and in bottle, to work alongside Old Highland Whisky against the competition: he ‘meant it to be totally different from OH, so that it would not interfere with it and yet be a whisky in value which no other house could compare with . . . it is distinct, has a character of its own’. The response from the market was not encouraging (nor apparently in London, where it was sold but without gaining much traction).61 He sought to protect the reputation of Old Highland by preventing agents undercutting each other on price in disputed territories – ‘I think this is the law we must lay down and stick to’ – and was determined to defend his trademarks.62 In November 1882, on the advice of his Glasgow lawyer (‘the best authority in Scotland on such matters’), he raised an action in the Court of Session in Edinburgh against an Edinburgh merchant, claiming that he had sent whisky to Australia under the name ‘James Walker’s Edinburgh Old Highland Whisky’, with labels designed and positioned on their bottles in order to deceive consumers – much to the damage of Walker’s business. They also sought an injunction against the merchant and his distributor in New South Wales to the same effect. Despite the best advice, success was not assured, ‘but’, said Walker, ‘in my opinion the exposure would do us as much good as if we did [win the case]’. The defendants attempted to defuse the issue first by withdrawing the labels, and then arguing that neither the wording nor appearance of Walker’s whisky (‘generally known in the Colonies as Walker’s Kilmarnock Whisky’) was particularly unique, but Walker was determined to carry the matter through ‘to strengthen the hands of Masons & others’, ultimately winning both actions.63
Alexander Walker certainly had good personal reason to protect the business that he had created so quickly. He had remarried in 1867, and since then his new wife, Isabella McKimmie, had delivered seven children: three sons (Alexander, Thomas and James) and four daughters (Helen, Isabella, Elizabeth and Margaret), to add to the three borne by his first wife: Mary, John (or Jack) and George. In 1873 Alexander had begun building a large new house with an equally large garden in London Road which the family moved into two years later – it was named Piersland House after a farm that had belonged to his wife’s family (and which Alexander later acquired). After Margaret’s birth he wrote to his cousin in Sydney: ‘That makes four sons [he had apparently forgotten one!] and five daughters[;] I sincerely hope the number is completed