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Simon Hackett (left) with Bevan AndersonInternode founder and technology investor Simon Hackett has made a major investment in AvPlan, an Australian company that develops iPad-based flight planning software for professional pilots.

eChallenge winnersA business plan to convert grease-trap waste into commercial-grade biodiesel won the 2013 University of Adelaide Entrepreneurship, Commercialisation and Innovation Centre (ECIC) Australian eChallenge. 

Energy from Waste Pty Ltd., with members Lisa Chao, Philip Curran, Dr David Rutley, Brian O’Neil and Ted McMurchie, not only won first prize at an awards’ dinner on Friday night, but also received the $10,000 Adelaide Airport Clean Tech Award and a trip to Austin Texas to compete in the Global Venture Labs Investment Competition – prizes totalling $52,218. 

Energy from Waste’s winning business plan outlines how it will design, construct, commission and operate biodiesel production plants at major waste processing companies that currently collect and dispose of grease-trap waste, eliminating their disposal costs and creating a new revenue stream.  

Professor Noel Lindsay, ECIC Director, says Energy from Waste was awarded first prize because the team delivered a proficient business plan that could result in positive outcomes for both local businesses and the environment.  

Dr. Richard Hamilton in his Marion vineyardsSA’s wine history unfolds in a just-released film about the history of the State's iconic wine-making dynasty, the Hamilton Family, spanning 176 years of vinicultural life & times

Wine Line – the Hamilton Story is a dramatised documentary film that highlights surprising human relationships and coincidences that underpinned the success of the family’s wine ventures – and the unheralded benefits they brought to the Australian wine industry.

Premiering last night at the equally iconic Capri Theatre, the film takes viewers on a creative journey through the history, life and times of SA’s earliest settlers - the Hamilton Family – who arrived on the second ship in the new colony in 1837. The family became founders of Hamilton’s Wines.

The documentary started as a corporate video production for Dr Richard Hamilton’s Leconfield Wines business – but as the family history was unearthed by a film-maker researcher, the project grew rapidly to a feature film reflecting six generations of a significant SA family. Dr Richard Hamilton is the great-great-grandson of the original founder Richard Hamilton.

“It was a passion of mine to see a way of telling the story of a unique family history after 175 years. I knew this was the time to act and what we came up with was a remarkable motion picture in which we had to recreate fascinating historic facts that were uncovered,” Dr Hamilton said.

The film was launched this week at the Capri Cinema on the exact day 176 years ago that Richard Hamilton, a tailor from Dover, England, set foot in South Australia.

Lauren DawesFresh from this year’s season of “The Voice”, Lauren Dawes, an outstanding singer with albinism, will perform at the Albinism Fellowship of Australia’s conference in Sydney this weekend.

Lauren, a model, actress and singer whose soulful performance on 2013’s season of ‘The Voice’ won her a spot being mentored by Seal, will sing at the welcome address and the “after conference” party

A person with albinism - an albino - is unable to produce the pigment melanin, so they typically have fair skin and hair and a visual impairment, often reading in the ‘legally blind’ category. 

More than 230 people are expected at the Albinism Fellowship of Australia national conference with runs from October 11-13. The event attracts people with albinism, their families and friends, medical and ophthalmic professionals from throughout Australia as well as NZ, Fiji, Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria and the US.

Albinism Fellowship President Elizabeth Beales described Lauren as a powerful role model for young people and children with the same condition. “Lauren’s singing talent and performance’s on ‘The Voice’ have won her many fans both inside and beyond the albinism community,” she said.