TasTAFE graduate Braydon Gower wins the ‘Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Student of the Year’ award at the Tasmanian Training Awards

Braydon Gower with his Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Student of the Year award at the 2025 Tasmanian Training Awards ceremony in Hobart.

TasTAFE Certificate III in Commercial Cookery graduate Braydon Gower took home the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Student of the Year award at the recent Tasmanian Training Awards celebration in Hobart.

Braydon, who has both Tasmanian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander heritage, was born in Queensland but moved with his family to Devonport when he was 7 – before relocating to Launceston a year later.

“I found school very challenging,” Braydon said. “I’m the sort of person that needs to be really interested in something so I can focus all of my effort – and it took me a while to figure out what that thing was.”

For Braydon, that thing was cooking.

“I found out that I was good at cooking when I was at Brooks High School in Launceston: they ran a hospitality course there,” he said.

Braydon says that it took him a few years to “mature” after school – and he considered joining the army at one point.  But his early encounter with hospitality learning gave him another pathway to consider.

When he was 22, Braydon started an apprenticeship at the Gorge Restaurant in Launceston and enrolled in the Certificate III in Commercial Cookery program at TasTAFE’s Paterson Street Campus.

The practical, hands-on learning style at TasTAFE suited Braydon perfectly, with great support from teachers Neville Bowden and Robert Atkins.

“The way my teachers explained stuff made it easy for me. They were patient and understood my learning ability. They made it all very easy to understand, so it felt useful in that way,” Braydon said.

The real-world skills that TasTAFE training provides also helped Braydon at work.

“We changed head chefs quite a lot at the Gorge. So, what I was doing at TasTAFE really helped me learn how to run the kitchen in the last year I was there, which was very helpful. The knowledge you get from TasTAFE you can really use in your job.

“The kitchens at TasTAFE also have way more equipment than I’ve ever had to use in the workplace, which will be good for the future.”

The future was becoming clear for Braydon. When he finished his apprenticeship at the end of 2024, he walked straight into the head chef position at Palawa Kipli, a Tasmanian Aboriginal catering company at Piyura Kitina/Risdon Cove just north of Hobart.

“We use a lot of native ingredients at Palawa Kipli like kunzea, wattle seed, lemon myrtle, cooking wallaby on the fire… But I’ve tried to modernise things a bit and make the flavours a bit easier for people who don't eat them often,” Braydon said.

“Wallaby tartare is probably the fanciest dish that I make and the most difficult one. You need to cut everything to the perfect size and make sure it's all mixed right and tastes well together. We don't make it often, but it's probably my favourite.”

How do visitors react when they first taste traditional Tasmanian bush tucker?

“Some people love it and for some people, it probably doesn’t agree with them much… But mostly it’s positive reactions, because people don’t really know that Tasmania has all these native ingredients, and they taste similar to a lot of European ingredients.”

Braydon has a clear vision for the future of Tasmanian native foods – which he’ll be sure to promote at the Australian Training Awards in Darwin on 5 December, and in his future travels.

“I'll be going to Darwin for a week, representing Tasmania. But my hope is to bring our native ingredients in the whole world, so not just our people get to use them.

“I want to travel and expand our Aboriginal food – and try other native ingredients from other parts of the world and see if we can bring those to the world stage as well. That's what I want to do.”

Braydon Gower talks with the audience after his win at the Tasmanian Training Awards.