Margaret River's contentious history

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Max reviews The Way It Was: A History of the Early Days of the Margaret River Wine Industry by Peter Forrestal and Ray Jordan (Margaret River Press). See also 50 years of Margs, published today. 

A good history book should illuminate the past. It should make you think differently about what you believed to be true. The Way It Was, by West Australian wine writers Peter Forrestal and Ray Jordan, certainly does that – but not necessarily in the way the authors intended.

I first visited Margaret River in 1997 and – surely like every new visitor –...