VICTORIA’S best apprentices were honoured for their achievements at the 2023 Master Builders Victoria (MBV) State Apprentice of the Year Awards last Thursday and two young locals had their talents formally recognised in the best possible way.

Todd Robinson and Austin Cloete walked away with the Future Builder Award and President’s Award respectively in front of more than 600 people who turned out to celebrate the occasion at Marvel Stadium in Melbourne.

In front of their fellow apprentices, employers, families and training providers, metropolitan category winners were formally recognized for their outstanding skills and commitment to the industry, joining major category winners from across regional Victoria, who received their awards at events through March 2023; Todd and Austin both work for Dunkeld-based businesses and won awards in the south-west Victoria region.

The regional and metropolitan winners then went head-to-head to reveal the overall winners of the state categories, with both Todd and Austin enduring nervous waits until almost the end to see if their names would be called.

Todd, who “wasn’t confident” of receiving any award, said he went to Melbourne just happy to have a pleasant dinner evening.

“I took my girlfriend (and) my parents,” he said.

“I was with my employers as well and we were going down just expecting to have a nice night in the city … obviously go to the awards night and pretty much expecting just to have a good time.

“(I was) very surprised when I received that award.”

Todd said the evening was lengthy, going through awards in all the different years of apprenticeships in metro and regional areas, and eventually arriving at the major ones, with his name read out as the Apprentice of The Year - Future Builder Award.

“Mine was one of the last ones,” he said.

He said the reaction from his entourage was best summed up as “they were all very proud”, with his parents especially “happy to watch the journey” come to such a good fruition.

“They were very happy, obviously, to see it coming to a good end result (and) personally see me enjoying the work that I'm doing now”.

For Austin, he said the experience was “the same sort of thing” as Todd with reserved expectations before the awards.

“I went there not expecting anything because I realised there was actually a lot of nominated blokes,” he said.

“It was a pretty incredible night … the amount of people that were attending it.”

“I remember just sitting in the chair there and I keep hearing other people getting called up, receive their awards there and I was (thinking), well, this is a small window left. Towards the end I sort of gave up … I was pretty happy for all the people who were winning.”

Austin said the experience was “surreal” and “it felt really good”.

“There’s no words to it, it was just an amazing honour.” he said.

The speech Austin gave was of great importance to him too.

“I managed to give a shout out to my dad because my dad passed away four weeks ago,” he said.

“That was nice to include him in the speech. He was the one that showed me most of my skills, and was the one that basically led me into getting into the building industry.

“When I was young, he used to show me all his woodwork. When I was 14, it seemed like he was a pretty crafty man himself, even though he was not a carpenter or anything, but he would just try things - just one of those agriculture people that would just try things out in the shed.”

Along with his dad, Austin said there were other important elements to his work.

“I need to also make sure I give a shout out to God,” he said.

“If it wasn't for my faith and believing - throughout life you have your ups and downs, but managing to have a good attitude towards life is the most important thing.

 I also wanted to give a shout also to my boss, Andrew Huf (who) gave me a chance and also south-west TAFE allowed me to study with them. And Master Builders of course.”

Austin said he wouldn’t have much time to consider the award, as he was set to go to Zimbabwe, the place of his birth, at the end of the week.

“I leave Hamilton to go to Melbourne (on) Thursday, and I fly out early Friday morning,” he said.

“I'll be overseas for about seven weeks (with) plenty of adventures that I'll be chasing while I'm over there.”

Todd said his ultimate dream was to run his own construction business and the future builder award category for him was “good fit for the way I go about my work”.

“I look forward to working for myself one day,” he said.

“I'd like to end up in doing high-end custom residential homes is sort of where I'm aiming at, which is a while down the track yet, obviously, but it's what I enjoy.

“(Especially) building things that are that are new and there's not necessarily pre-agreed on techniques to do it.

“(To) invent ways of putting things together and problem solving - projects like that.”

The overall winner of 2023 State Apprentice of the Year Award was 23-year-old Isaac Stolk from Wendouree, who had been awarded the Ballarat Apprentice of the Year Craftsperson Award in the earlier regional awards, and also took out the overall State Award in the same category.

MBV president, Geoff Purcell said he was thrilled and heartened to see the quality and the passion of the next generation of the industry coming through, across such a broad variety of trades and skills.