The Australia Connection
Whether it’s promoting Aussie seafood and wines at Saturday’s Honolulu Wine Festival or organizing a UH football game Down Under, Mark Berwick does it to strengthen the historic ties between Hawaii and Australia
By Chad Pata
E-mail this story | Print this page | Archive | RSS |
Del.icio.us
At home with wife Leana, daughter Holly
and pooch Chico
This meant the Australian Trade Commission (Austrade) would have 19 representatives in major U.S. cities to help foster relationships between American buyers and Aussie sellers - exactly what he had been doing in Australia, but on a much grander scale. Goodbye direct mailroom. Hello, penthouse.
“A lot of it was just right place at the right time, but I also had a strange skill set that they were looking for,” says Berwick from his office atop the Cades Schutte building overlooking Honolulu Harbor.
It was as if his whole life had been preparing him for this job, and love conspired to put him in the right place.
“I tell my bosses all the time that I absolutely love my job,” says Berwick. “Every day my workload changes. I could be working with a terry towel manufacturer or a bee’s wax candle producer, to lobster or shiraz. It’s exciting in that you never know what you’ll be doing.”
Business ties between Hawaii and Australia are strong. An Aussie company manages Hawaii’s airspace for the FAA, and another Aussie firm owns The Gas Company.
The Aussies are especially targeting Hawaii as a market for seafood, dairy products (specialty cheeses) and wines. With declining numbers of fish in Hawaiian waters, and with commercial fishing in the Northwestern Islands due to close, you can expect more Australian fish varieties at your favorite market.
Australian seafood, cheeses and wines will be the focus at the 17th annual Honolulu Wine Festival Saturday (July 29).
The yearly event - a fund- raiser for the Lupus Foundation - will be a great opportunity for Berwick to show off what the Aussies have to offer. More than 15 local chefs, including Alan Wong and Russell Siu, are preparing Aussie foods to be paired with Australian wines by Master
Sommelier Chuck Furuya and Lyle Fujioka, the wine guy at Times Super Markets and MidWeek vino columnist.
“People are going to be blown away by the quality of everything the Aussies are sending to Hawaii,” says Fujioka, who will be bringing Aussie cheeses to Times. “The wines have been really good for years, and the fish are excellent.”
But Berwick is bringing in more than just products. Last year, he brought in top Aussie chefs to help teach courses at KCC ,and this year plans to bring them to campuses on the Big Island and Maui.
“Australia wants to be part of Hawaii moving forward,” he says. “At the end of the day, we are not just here to sell a bunch of products and say thank you and leave. It is an ongoing relationship we are trying to build.”
It is not just the products of this island continent he is trying to help export, but its people as well. He plans to have an Aussie rock month on a local radio station that will culminate with hot new Australian bands coming here for a concert.
He is also bringing out Circus Oz to the Hawaii Theatre for six shows in November, and in an exporting role he is putting the final touches on an arrangement to bring UH football to Australia for the start of the 2007 season.
As the deal stands now, UH would play Fresno State at Aussie Stadium on a Saturday afternoon in August, which would give it a live broadcast Friday night in the States on ESPN.
While he admits the game probably wouldn’t sell out in rugbyand cricket-crazy Australia, the other benefits far outweigh a half-full stadium.
“At the end of the day the universities aren’t doing this as a revenue maker,” says Berwick, who says he has gotten full support from June Jones and FSU head coach Pat Hill.
“What they are really after is to play on national television and to be the first real college football game played in Australia (there have been two exhibitions previously).”
Even with all his grandiose plans for the future of the new open-trading ground between our countries, Berwick found that perhaps our most beneficial trading is being done culturally.
Last year he brought an aboriginal performance group named Descendance to the Hawaiian Immersion School on Molokai. Each group performed for the other their native dances and songs.
At the end the groups merged, with guitars and ukes pairing up with didgeridoos and music sticks to play the music of Bob Marley. Berwick noticed a few of the Hawaiians crying because they realized they were not alone.
“Maybe they felt like they are an indigenous group all by themselves with no one to relate to,” says Berwick. “But you have pockets of indigenous groups all over the world that are part of a greater network that share common concerns about loss of culture and land rights.”
Now if Berwick can help bring about that kind of globalization, that would be some end to his novel.
Page 2 of 2 pages for this story < 1 2
E-mail this story | Print this page | Comments (0) | Archive | RSS
Most Recent Comment(s):
