Twilight Talks 2025, Season 3, Spring Season | Ballarat's Henry Lawson, Unknown facts presented by Hedley Thomson
2025-09-03 17:30 - 18:30 (Australia/Melbourne) | BMI – Humffray Room, 117-119 Sturt Street, Ballarat Central, VIC, 3350, Australia
Innovators:

Uncovering some of Ballarat's best minds.

Session 4Ballarat industry: At the cutting edge of world of research & development.

Ballarat: Old, gold and cold? Or a thriving liveable city of the future?Do we deserve a new motto? Should our reputation remain in the past? Or should we embrace the vision of Ballarat being one of the world’s most sustainable and regenerative cities? What legacy should we leave for future generations? What do we really value? This presentation will consider these thought-provoking prompts and aims to provide some realistic responses and innovative insights. Talina Edwards is an internationally-recognised and award-winning sustainability leader in the built-environment profession. She runs a small carbon-neutral practice in Wadawurrung Country (Ballarat) with a team of five passionate women. Core values are to create healthy, beautiful, functional, comfortable and sustainable architecture which combines building-science and biophilic-design to respond to our purpose to care for Country and cultivate a living future for all. Talina is a registered Architect and Certified Passive House Designer and is currently undertaking the Living Future Accreditation course to engage more deeply in a regenerative-design ethos. She is a passionate advocate for building a better future together, with roles at the Australian Passive House Association (APHA Deputy Chair), ArchiTeam CoOperative Advocacy Committee, Australian Architects Declare movement and more.She lives with her partner and their two sons and cares deeply about the legacy we are leaving our future generations.

Luke Brennan “Food and other organic waste in landfill is one of the key contributors to greenhouse gas emissions in Australia, with the emissions related to fossil fuels being another major factor. The effective collection and treatment of organic waste is an issue that food manufacturers, local councils, agriculture operations and Governments currently face and must resolve if they are to meet the target of halving the amount of food waste entering landfill by 2030 (Victorian Government, 2020). Anaerobic Digestion (AD) presents significant opportunity to address key challenges related to organic waste disposal and renewable energy generation for industry and communities, and whilst it is a proven technology for producing renewable energy from organic waste streams overseas, there are a number of barriers currently prevent it from being commercially viable in Australia. Gaia EnviroTech (the bioenergy division of Gekko Systems) is addressing these barriers through providing environmentally sustainable and scalable solutions for organic waste disposal with their modular and scalable multi-stage Anaerobic Biodigester and the Rapid Composter systems.” Gaia Enviro, The Ballarat company getting ahead of the bio-energy future.

Luke Brennan

Series Artwork: Glass Plate, Henry Sutton, Colour Photograph, 1890s Courtesy Federation University Australia Historical Collection.

The session will take place in the Humffray Room, Level 4, though this will depend on final numbers. Bar open from 5.00pm | Talk starts at 5.30pm

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Tickets | Session CostThe session cost is $12 per person | $10 per person for BMI members.

Book Tickets

Artwork Plate Viewer: Don’t miss seeing the ‘viewer’ that Henry Sutton created the image that the series artwork is based on. On display in the Library. Courtesy: Federation University Historical Collection.

Plate Viewer

Plate Viewer, The Junior Kromskop, c1899

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