2020 Shine Awards Passion winner and finalists
Events organiser Kate Davis, who is putting Ballarat on the gastronomic map and connecting west Victorian producers with foodies and chefs, is the 2020 Shine Awards Passion winner.
2020 Shine Awards Passion winner
Kate Davis, food event organiser, Ballarat, Victoria
PASSION ON A PLATE
BEHIND every prosperous rural town there is usually one dynamic individual.
Ballarat has Kate Davis.
In 2012 Kate – who is born and bred in the regional city – started the Ballarat Beer Festival, a one-day event in January showcasing about 40 craft brewers.
Such was its success, she sold the annual event in 2015, and it continues to run each year.
Then when the City of Ballarat asked her to come up with an idea to promote Ballarat food in winter, Kate created a month-long pie competition, with more than 10,000 pies consumed in venues throughout the city.
In 2018 Kate created another key event on the town’s event calendar, Plate Up Ballarat, which (pandemic aside) offers about 50 events, with each venue showcasing at least three locally grown ingredients.
And it is on the back of the success of Plate Up that Kate has concocted her most recent ingenious plan: Eat Drink West.
Eat Drink West is a website of west Victorian farmers designed so chefs and consumers can access their produce.
“I didn’t want the message of supporting local producers to just end with Plate Up in May. I wanted to be able to support them every single day,” she says.
Eat Drink West also runs events to bring producers, consumers and venue operators together.
Producers pay a one-off $750 establishment fee, followed by a smaller annual subscription. In return they receive a web profile, video and photos, social media updates and invitations to events.
“If producers are working flat out on their farms they don’t have extra marketing resources and that’s where we come in to help support them,” she says.
Given she didn’t grow up on a farm, why is it that she has made promoting the area’s food production her number one driver?
Kate says her main motivator is her love of Ballarat.
“People tell me the reason events work is because of me,” she says. “I don’t even know what that means.
“I think it’s because I’m passionate and I care. It helps that I love food, wine, people and Ballarat.”
For her unwavering commitment to her hometown, which is boosting the fortunes of producers across the region, Kate Davis is a deserving winner of the Shine Award for Passion.
FINALIST
Alex Thomas, farm safety consultant, Adelaide Hills, South Australia
FARM SAFETY CIRCUIT BREAKER
GROWING up on a sheep station in northeast South Australia, Alex Thomas saw first-hand the critical importance of farm safety.
She was aged just three when her father — facing financial stress from drought — opted to muster and sell feral goats, which led to him contract the deadly Q fever, followed by other illnesses.
Ultimately, Alex says, her father was forced to sell the station, and ever since Alex has carried the weight of responsibility for his health.
“Looking back it all started after the drought and financial stress saw him work around the clock,” she says.
“Maybe if we had more knowledge and more conversations about what he was putting his body through, things would have been different.”
The “conversations” Alex refers to are now at the heart of her work specialising in agricultural health and safety.
For more than a decade, the 32-year-old has run Alex Thomas Pty Ltd, working with farmers and the agricultural industry to improve health and safety through workshops and consulting projects. Her message to farmers is simple: manage risk by thinking, talking and doing something about it.
“These days the emphasis is on more practical aspects. A lot of farmers don’t realise this change and have a misplaced emphasis on paperwork,” she says. “We forget the intent of compliance is simple: just don’t kill someone.”
Alex, who lives in the Adelaide Hills, says it’s about tailoring solutions to each farm.
“Have that Q fever injection, charge the radio before you go out on the farm all day, put a guard on the auger, don’t step over an exposed PTO shaft, be mindful of fatigue.”
One of Alex’s largest projects is the online #PlantASeedForSafety project, which focuses on the voices of rural women in farm safety.
“Often men have been doing dangerous farm work for decades and that work becomes habituated. Rural women bring a fresh perspective to environments notorious for having ‘done it this way for years’,” she says.
“Change is incremental, but it can happen overnight when everyone wants that change to happen. This is my way of giving back.”
FINALIST
Suzannah Moss-Wright, lamb producer, Lancelin, Western Australia
WRIGHT ON THE MONEY
IT IS rare today for anyone to extol the virtues of fat.
But that is exactly what Western Australia’s Suzannah Moss-Wright does – and is winning accolades for it.
More specifically, the intramuscular fat known as marbling found in the juicy chops of her Mottainai Lamb, produced on 1220 hectares at Lancelin, north of Perth.
Using the term “lamb Wagyu” after the famous high-fat Japanese beef, Mottainai Lamb can have up to 40 per cent marbling.
But the real genius behind Suzannah is her commitment to sustainability, research and development, which has made the meat sought-after around the globe by the likes of Hyatt and Ritz Carlton hotel group.
So convinced was she of the product’s merits, founder and managing director Suzannah even quit her job as a chief executive and international trade lawyer to go lamb-farming full-time.
“A lot of people engage in research and development and don’t find anything. We were lucky things fell together for us and it was better than expected,” says Suzannah, who grew up on a sheep and cattle farm in NSW, and oversees research on their West Australian farm with her husband, Deon Moss, and four staff.
Mottainai Lamb launched about two years ago, and partners with eight farmers who supply lambs to the Lancelin property.
The key to her high-marbling lamb? Feeding the lambs food waste, including carrots and olive oil deemed unsaleable, supplied by a partner farm.
“It’s a sustainable way to feed this highly digestible fibre to lambs,” Suzannah says.
“It means our lamb is the only lamb meat in the world that is comparable to the second-highest grade of Japanese Wagyu beef.”
Which shows Suzannah is not only committed to producing the best tasting lamb, but also the all-important five Rs — reduce, reuse, recycle, respect and reconnect.
MORE SHINE AWARDS
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