The Valley's Tragic Loss
Newcastle Herald
Friday January 18, 2008
A TRAGIC pall has been cast over the Hunter wine region's 2008 harvest season by yesterday's untimely death of leading vigneron Trevor Drayton.
Mr Drayton's sudden and shocking loss has robbed the wine industry and the Hunter Region of an passionate and hard-working advocate. More than just a highly successful winemaker, Mr Drayton was a strong supporter of charities, a thoughtful industry lobbyist and an articulate campaigner for Hunter tourism. The winemaking Drayton family has deep roots in the soil of the Hunter Valley. The family and its wines have been a part of the Hunter since the 1850s and their products and enterprise have been instrumental in keeping the region high in the world's esteem. Most painfully for the family, yesterday's disaster echoes past tragedies. Winemaker Barry Drayton lost his life when overcome by poisonous fumes while cleaning a vat at his Pokolbin winery in 1977 and Pam and Reg Drayton died in the high-profile Seaview Air plane crash in 1994, en route to Lord Howe Island. Trevor Drayton was a past president of the Hunter Valley Vineyards Association and was vice president at the time of his death. During his time in the family business he built an enviable reputation as a highly intelligent advocate for the industry and the region, and also as the producer of some superb wines most notably shiraz and semillon styles.His death has dealt a cruel blow to his family, the Australian wine industry and the Hunter Valley community. Supply and demandUNIVERSITY Admissions Index cut-offs for degree courses are a simple representation of supply and demand. On one side of the equation is the supply of places in a university course and on the other side is the number and quality of applicants.Fewer available places and more applicants (or applicants with higher marks) generally means the UAI cut-off point must rise. Conversely, more places and fewer applicants leads directly to a lower cut-off point.Universities and applicants use this common piece of knowledge in different ways at different times. Sometimes a very high UAI cut-off point is used as a marketing tool to highlight the extreme desirability of a certain course at a certain institution. At other times, low cut-offs are used to highlight the generous availability of access to the opportunity to earn tertiary qualifications.The University of Newcastle has in recent years adopted the latter approach in the face of reductions in UAI cut-offs for a number of its courses. In doing so it has rejected assertions from some academics that educational standards were being put at risk. Certainly, the record 8163 first-round offers made this year by the university, coupled with a reasonably accessible median UAI cut-off of 82, indicates an institution intent on fulfilling its mission of providing higher education to the greatest possible number of people.
© 2008 Newcastle Herald
