In fact the Breheny family was one of the biggest names in brewing across Australia, and still has an presence today. But in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Brehenys had a brewing and distilling empire which encompassed the country.

As well as entrepreneurial skills, their success lay in shared brewing knowledge, giving them the capability to make palatable liquor when not all alcohol was necessarily fit for consumption.

The Brehenys left Tynagh in County Galway, Ireland in 1854, for Geelong. John and Bridget Breheny arrived with their seven children, two girls and five boys. Their son, also John, wasted no time in leasing the Williamstown marine stockade (prison), converting it to the Marine Stockade Brewery in 1864.

His brothers (and their ever-widening number of sons) soon dominated Victoria's brewing from Carlton to Collingwood and Gippsland to Geelong. Three Brehenys, Peter, Jack and Thomas, invested in William Kenna's Warrenheip Brewery. Kenna was a well-respected and liked beermaker, but his personal life was subject to tragedy.

Kenna's family was afflicted by loss. One of his sons, Leonard, died during an influenza epidemic in 1898 aged just 16. Another perished of pneumonia. William Kenna lost five sons to illness in all, and other members of his family died of various outbreaks of disease.

So it must have seemed something of a blessing when the Breheny brothers came to him with the offer of a partnership in 1891. Becoming Breheny Bros & Kenna, the firm prospered, combining the talents of Kenna's long career in beermaking with those of the brothers - and the fortuitous supply of clean spring water at Warrenheip.

A photograph taken around 1910 shows a Breheny Bros & Kenna liveried lorry loaded with beer barrels outside the bluestone stores in Lydiard Street North (later the Miners Tavern). Owning a motor vehicle was a sign of a prosperous business, when most deliveries were still made by horse and cart.

William Kenna died around the time of the photograph, and four years later, in 1914, the Breheny brothers ceased brewing beer and started distilling spirits at Warrenheip. One of the reasons for this may have been the consolidation of brewing companies in central Ballarat, with several merging to form the Ballarat Brewing Company.

The Brehenys produced gin and whisky at Warrenheip for another eight years, before selling the distillery business and site to Federal Distillers, at the time the third largest distillery in the world. In 1932 a merger with the Distillers Company of Edinburgh saw the formation of United Distillers Limited.

An interesting outcome of this merger were the conditions placed on the production of Australian whisky, which had a tariff advantage of 40 per cent over imported products. Australian spirits were subsequently produced by the British-owned companies to a lower quality than those brought in from the UK, in order to give the imports an advantage.

By the second decade of the 20^th Century much of the Breheny influence in Ballarat had disappeared, but the family had strong businesses with the City Brewery in Melbourne and Gippsland Brewery in Sale, Victoria; the Silverstream Brewery in Toowoomba and Cairns Brewing Company in Queensland, the Cooperative Brewery in Tasmania; The Redcastle Brewing Company in Perth, Castlemaine Brewing Company in Fremantle and Globe Brewing Company in Geraldton, Western Australia.

Thomas Breheny was head brewer for Tooth's in Sydney and promoted an early alcohol-free beer.

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