Hon Sir William Macarthur was born at Parramatta on 16th December 1800, the fifth son of John and Elizabeth Macarthur, pioneers of the Australian wool industry. He was educated in England at Rugby School, returned to Australia with his father in 1817, and assisted in the management of his estates.

These estates included land controlled by the Macarthurs south along the Murrumbidgee River from Gundagai. James and William Macarthur stocked ‘Nangus Station’ with cattle in 1831. The island in the middle of the River at Nangus is marked as one of the early goldfields and named ‘Macarthur Island’. The island is where the highly auriferous Adelong Creek enters the Murrumbidgee River.

In 1844, William Macarthur, regarded at the time as a leading Australian viticulturist, published a small volume, Letters on the Culture of the Vine, Fermentation, and the Management of the Cellar, which was widely read. He was President of New South Wales Vineyard Association and had a vineyard and extensive cellars at the family estate at Camden Park.

In 1849 he was made a member of the New South Wales Legislative Council. Macarthur represented New South Wales at the Paris International Exhibition of 1855. Shortly afterwards he was knighted. After his return to Australia in 1857, he was again appointed a member of the Legislative Council, but he never took a prominent part in politics and was more at home with his pastoral pursuits having been given of stewardship of his family’s landmark pastoral property Camden Park. He was also an active in club life and served as the president of the Australian Club.

He died unmarried on 29 October 1882. His estate was left to his niece Elizabeth Onslow, wife of Arthur Onslow.

A funeral was held today 20th December 2005 for Joseph L. Owades, the “godfather of the brewing industry,” who invented light beer and ushered in the age of the micro-brewery in America.

Owades, a biochemist who stumbled into beer making when he couldn’t find a job studying his specialty of cholesterol, died Friday 16th December 2005 of heart failure at his home in Sonoma. He was 86.

A nationally known brewmaster, he trained virtually every brewer of note in the country, and developed the formulas for many of the nation’s leading beers, including Samuel Adams Boston Lager.

He was hired by Schwarz Laboratories, which specialized in developing yeast for foods and beverages, including breweries. In 1960, he was hired by Rheingold Breweries in Brooklyn, where he became vice president and technical director.

It was at Rheingold where developed a process to remove the starch from beer, making it lower in carbohydrates and calories and, thus, cholesterol.

The new beer was called Gablinger’s, which became a product of Meister Brau, all of which was eventually purchased by the Miller Brewing Co. Miller Lite was made famous by the company’s “tastes great, less filling” advertising campaign, but it was exactly the same product that Owades had invented in his laboratory years before.

Owades also worked in Athens, Greece, for the K. Fix Brewing Company, for Anheuser-Busch in St. Louis and the Carling Brewing in Boston before starting his own consulting firm in 1975, helping both Miller and Budweiser develop beer. He moved to San Francisco’s Russian Hill in 1982 after his wife sold a mail-order catalog business she had founded to Williams-Sonoma. The couple also bought a home in Sonoma.

Owades became well known in the early days of the craft brewing industry, creating the formulas for Samuel Adams, Tuborg, New Amsterdam Beer, Pete’s Wicked Ale and Foggy Bottom Beer, among others.

He taught courses called “Art and Science of Brewing” and “All About Beer” at San Francisco’s Anchor Brewing Co. until his death.