Chapter One

THE PIONEERS

The soft drinks industry in Australia developed from the artificially carbonated waters which were first produced on a commercial scale in the late 18th century. Before that time, however, small (low alcohol content) beers, spa and spring waters and fruit flavoured drinks were consumed and they may be said to have been the precursors of today's soft drinks.

Spa and spring waters were extremely popular in Europe during the late 18th century, and we know that long before that time the Romans liked spa waters both to drink and to bathe in.  Fruit-flavoured waters were a later development. The earliest reference to "lemonade" cited in the Oxford English Dictionary is dated 1663. The drink then was almost certainly made from freshly squeezed lemons, probably sweetened with sugar or honey and diluted with water to make a still drink.

Dr. Joseph Priestley, a Unitarian minister and scientist, is often dubbed the "father" of the soft drinks industry because it was he who, in the late 1760's, discovered a method of artificially carbonating water. He published this process in 1772 as "Directions for Impregnating Water with Fixed Air".

The French scientist Lavoisier identified "fixed air" as carbon dioxide. If the trade historians got it right, a Manchester apothecary, Thomas Henry, was first to manufacture carbonated waters on a commercial scale. But his operations were small. It was Jacob Schweppe, a Swiss chemist, who began making artificial carbonated waters in 1794 on a bigger scale, first in Bristol and later in London. Soda water originated during that period, and so did the house of Schweppes, the only name to have survived in the soft' drinks industry from that distant period to this day.

So far as Australia is concerned, Sydney Cove was where soft drinks were first made. Benjamin Hill may have been the first maker, as he is recorded as producing ginger ale in Chapel Row (today's Castlereagh Street) in 1814, only 26 years after the First Fleet sailed into Sydney Harbour to colonise Australia.