When Captain Cook first landed at Botany Bay he thought he’d struck gold: a land of sweeping plains, rugged mountain ranges and coincidentally a beaut spot to dump a penal colony.

Fast forward to now, he wasn’t to know that Australians would have celebrated his arrival by building a shipping container port, oil refinery and airport at Botany Bay. Ah the serenity.

But that’s the enterprising spirit of the people in NSW.

It’s this same enterprising spirit that shone through at the 2012 Telstra NSW Business Awards.

Take for instance the winner of the 2012 NSW HTC Start-Up Award winner Evolve Orthodontics. According to Dr John Brabant, Evolve is more than just their business name. “Evolve is what businesses need to do to succeed,” he said as he accepted the Award. But this enterprising spirit manifests itself in another way for Dr Brabant. He has decided to give back to his local community of Albury Wodonga through the establishment of a charity, Carevan, which seeks to fight against poverty in his region.

In what was a special night for Tori and Andy, StoneSet took out the 2012 NSW News Limited Micro Business Award four years to the day that they decided to set up a business.  Just like Captain Cook, Tori and Andy headed out to Australia and unlike James Cook, found themselves in a restaurant wondering if they could establish a business in Australia. Well it’s that enterprising spirit cropping up again because they sure did establish a business and four years on they have been recognised for their resin bound technology for permeable paving.

For Luke Nguyen, all he wanted to do was establish his own business. With his family escaping Vietnam by boat and setting up a restaurant at Cabramatta in Sydney, at 23 Luke decided he wanted to create his own restaurant. So, no doubt filled with that enterprising spirit that seems to be fostered in NSW, he created Red Lantern. Passionate about food, Luke said at Red Lantern, the kitchen is all about “peace, love and mung beans”.

Like Evolve Orthodontics, regional NSW is quite the entrepreneurial place to be. The 2012 NSW Telstra Region Award was by Hume Building Society, a business in operation for 55 years with more than 55,000 members and, yes, established by some enterprising locals in Albury fed up with the lack of funds for housing they established their own building society.

And so it leads us to the winner of both the 2012 NSW MYOB Small Business Award and the 2012 Telstra NSW Business of the Year. This is Laservision, a world leader in entertainment communications and a Guinness World Record holder for the longest laser light show. So successful are they at what they do, each new client asks that their project be bigger and better than the last production. Indeed the company has completed projects in 25 countries with offices in Singapore, Hong Kong and India.

There you have it… the entrepreneurial nature that is NSW.

Congratulations to all the entrants, finalists and winners of the 2012 Telstra NSW Business Awards.

Don’t forget you can have a peek at the winners at the Telstra Awards YouTube® site.

Related Links:

• Telstra Business Awards