A weekly re-cap of the events that have made news in Cairns over the past week.

Monday July 12, 2004 134th Edition

Salvaged timber creates export opportunity
Local entrepreneur Frank Botel has turned a hobby for salvaging trash timber into a burgeoning export and customised furniture business and recently launched a new workshop and showroom in Cairns. The business, Aus-Slab International, is currently exporting rainforest and native timbers in bulk to Hong Kong and Japan for use in flooring, cabinet making and structural applications. “What we are finding out is Australian rainforest and open timber are highly sought after, not because there’s not a lot of timber out there but because there is specific interest in Australian varieties,” Mr Botel said.

Research centre beneficial for Cairns
A world-class multi functional research centre may be set up in Cairns brining together various research organisations under one roof. A reef and rainforest co-operative research centre and the CSIRO’s Atherton Herbarium could be included in the plan. Member for Leichhardt Warren Entsch said other research organisations in the region that received government funding could also be a part of the centre. “CRC will be bigger, better and stronger and we’ll bring all these others around it and end up with a centre of excellence,” Mr Entsch said. “There’ll only be one place like this in the world.”

Fruit wines recognised as top drop
Local fruit wineries won a total of 14 medals at the inaugural Cairns Show Wine Awards recently. The competition featured 40 table wine entries, two ports and six liqueurs from seven Far North wineries. Among the winners were Wineworks Downunder who took the Best Sweet Fruit Wine award for its lychee variety as well as two gold medals, two silver and two bronze. Murdering Point winery won six medals including a silver and five bronze. Proprietor Don Berryman said, “The judges got a pleasant surprise because they were not expecting the quality that’s out there.”

Tropical cures offer new industry for Cairns
Cairns has the potential to develop low-priced cures for tropical diseases, provided private investors were to come on board, the state’s chief scientist announced recently. Professor Peter Andrews who attended the Asia-Pacific Forum on Tropical Health Innovation in Cairns last week said the city should exploit its geographic position, its expertise in tropical medicine and the fact that the cost of science in Australia was a third cheaper than in the US. “We need to utilise our tropical research base and our tropical clinicians here in Cairns to be the first ones into that patch, to be developing the businesses that develop new medicines or new vaccines or diagnostics,” Professor Andrews said.