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Dairy Australia is very proud to support many worthy initiatives in the dairy industry, and one such initiative is the Cheesemaker Scholarship. This year, due to the support of our partners, the National Centre for Dairy Education Australia (NCDEA), National Foods, De Cicco Industries and Milawa Cheese, Dairy Australia was able to offer 3 scholarships to promising cheesemakers with a real vision for themselves within the industry.

Valued at over $10,000, each program includes a series of cheese training courses at NCDEA, an industry induction with Dairy Australia and experiential placements with National Foods, De Cicco and Milawa Cheese, as well as all travel expenses.

Media Release - Cheesemaker Scholarships Awarded

2008 Cheesemaker Scholarship Winners

Jaidyn Canobie is a young man who comes from a family of Ayrshire cow breeders in Drouin West, Victoria. He has worked at cheesemaking plants around his region and was part of the team that won the world's foremost white mould cheese award - awarded at Wisconsin in 2004. He has just bought a smallholding on a tourist gourmet trail in Gippsland and seeks not only to become a successful cheesemaker, but an advocate for the Australian dairy industry.

Lynton Foster is from Lindisfarne in Tasmania and is very interested in technology that could see simpler processes put more cheesemaking into more farmhouses of Australia. He believes a career making quality cheeses is his ‘Holy Grail' and plans to open a farm-based cheesemaking business in partnership with an existing winery.

Ros Garston is from Margaret River in WA and is a third generation dairy farmer who was inspired by a visiting Swiss dairy trainee and cheesemaker.  So determined was she to develop her cheesemaking skills that she offered her own home so that tutors from across the other side of Australia could come and run classes. Mother, teacher, trained home economist, dairy farmer and now cheesemaker in training.

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2007 Cheesemaker Scholarship Winners

From left to right; Justine McCarthy, Paul Wilson and Nigel Jackson

Nigel Jackson
The first scholarship recipient was inspired after watching a tv program on cheesemaking. It motivated him to convert part of the family’s old dairy into a simple cheesemaking factory and began making cheese after school. He now has a Diploma in Food Technology and has acquired a second-hand cheese factory that he has moved near to his Yatala home in Queensland.

Justine McCarthy
This Victorian–based scholarship recipient  worked in the food industry in the UK and Switzerland before completing her Bachelor of Applied Science and she also holds an Advanced Diploma of Hospitality Management. As a child she loved to finish off the cheese platter after her parents dinner parties and is looking forward to producing a cheese to ‘excite people’!

Paul Wilson           
The next scholarship recipient is a dairy farmer in the Nimbin Valley.  He is completing farm tourism studies this year and plans to develop a farmhouse cheesemaking, café and accommodation complex attracting visitors to the northern NSW region.

2006 Cheesemaker Scholarship Winner

Erica Dibden (right)
Erica Dibden won the award in 2006 with her plans to open a cheesery in a historic hall on her Tilba Tilba farm.  She has been building up her South Coast Cheese business which employs three people and produces about 35 tonnes of cheese a year.

Cheesemaker Scholarship Inaugural Winner

Kate Woodward
The first ever scholarship winner, multi-award-winning Kate Woodward has expanded her range of Hunter Belle cheese to include hard varieties such as cheddar and gruyere and sells to an established market of Sydney and Melbourne consumers.Her enterprise employs five staff and she is still a devoted fan of her Brown Swiss cows.