2025 Stephen Cole the Elder Award for Excellence awarded to Jill Bauer

Ms Jill Bauer, from the School of Agriculture, Food and Wine, has been recognised with a Stephen Cole the Elder Award for Excellence in Teaching and Support for Learning.

Jill is celebrated for her transformative impact on wine education and for shaping clear, supportive pathways for students in oenology and viticulture. Through sustained leadership, she has embedded a global mindset, innovation, professional identity, and authentic industry engagement into the student experience—significantly enriching learning outcomes and strengthening connections between education and the wine sector.

2025 Images of Learning and Teaching award winner Tea Knezevic

PhD student Tea Knezevic was a winner in the Images of Learning and Teaching awards, with her photograph of a wine glass juxtaposed with one of cider gum trees from which she has successfully isolated and characterised yeasts that may one day be used in winemaking:

From Bush to Glass by Tea Knezevic

For thousands of years, Aboriginal communities across Australia have used native plants to produce fermented beverages. One such drink was Way-a-linah – a sweet, fermented beverage made from the sap of Tasmanian Eucalyptus trees. Currently, climate change and bushfires are threatening the survival of these trees. British settlement had a devastating effect on Tasmanian Aboriginal communities, decimating the population and endangering traditional knowledge and culture. Therefore, the traditional practice of making Way-a-linah is no longer performed.

Inspired by this lost tradition, a question emerged: Can we capture the essence of an ancient practice and bottle it?
In collaboration with the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre, the Wine Microbiology Laboratory at the Waite Campus is working on answering this question. During a visit to Tasmania in 2023, samples of sap and bark were collected, and over 500 yeasts were isolated and tested under winemaking conditions. This year, the project reached an exciting milestone, conducting consumer tastings of Chardonnay and Shiraz made with native Tasmanian yeasts.

While it will take time for these wines to appear on store shelves, this project is about more than wine; it is helping to revive tradition, preserve culture, and reimagine heritage for future generations.