Next year, 2022, will be a significant milestone for the Lark Distillery and Australia’s booming craft spirits industry. It will mark three decades since Bill Lark, a Hobart land surveyor with a crazy dream of making single malt whisky, became the first Tasmanian to be granted a distilling licence in more than 150 years.

That moment has become the creation story for Australia’s craft whisky makers: the day, in 1992, when Lark convinced the authorities to change the legislation and allow small-scale distillation, thus kick-starting the modern whisky boom. The enormous influence that Bill and his wife, Lyn, had on the hundreds of people who subsequently set up their own distilleries is legendary.