About

David Burston – Communication Background

David Burston is an expert in communication and creativity training. His business is based at theSPACE in Cairns and as volunteer Pitch Master he has constant interaction with entrepreneurs and businesses. In the 2016 Australia Post Regional Pitching Competition, 60% of the regional Queensland finalists contestants came from Cairns.

TEDx JCU. In 2014 David began coaching and mentoring the speakers in the newly launched TEDx James Cook University event. The TEDx presenters are inspiring local people; academic, indigenous and innovators, all with great ideas. They are coached to be memorable speakers over a three month period.  See TEDXJCU for all the previous speakers presentations

Workshops. Over one thousand participants have received training in Professional Communication workshops or Toastmasters Speechcraft courses delivered by David across Queensland, Northern Territory and Papua New Guinea. The workshops are of a highly interactive nature and utilise learning reinforced by humour. The learning starts with the way the brain and mind reacts, leading to the focus on the “why” of communication strategies. This allows the participants to apply the knowledge to a wide range of presentation circumstances. These workshops are tailored to participants coming from corporate, education, community or indigenous backgrounds. See some of the feedback from the workshops click here.

Indigenous and English-as-a-second-language Workshops. These workshops cover the same content of our normal workshops, but normally with a slower rate of delivery. We include videoing of activities with indigenous participants who are masters of very strong visual recall.

International mentoring, coaching and training.  David Burston participates in ongoing weekly and monthly international communication training and mentoring through Stage Time University. This gives him exposure to the latest communication skills from around the world.

Awards. In Toastmasters David received “Toastmaster of the year” in 2013 from Toastmaster District 69 which had over 3,000 members. This was primarily for delivering communication workshops across North Queensland, Northern Territory and Papua New Guinea, and with and amazing team of Area Governors, increased North Queensland’s Toastmasters membership, at over five times the state average.

David Burston – Business Background

Agriculture – David Burston has a varied entrepreneurial history. This has included agricultural enterprises; farming, irrigation, hay production, earth-moving, building high-efficiency shearing sheds, shearing and horse breaking. Other areas he has worked in are; piloting a light aircraft, ski instructing, bee transport and vegetable industry consulting.

Peppermint – As project manager he developed the NE Victorian peppermint industry growers capacity for their first commercial year. Part of this project was to locate and built a 300 horsepower shell and tube distillery and modified growing and harvesting equipment to suit the new peppermint crops.

Aquaculture – In the late 1980’s after he designed and built a 50 acre irrigation dam on his property and he ventured into aquaculture with two partners. They created Australian Yabby Farms and developed the yabby (freshwater crayfish) industry in Victoria.

David designed and built an automated hatchery at Cobram with 1,400 rotating aquariums that produced a million juveniles per month with 1.5 labour units. The next largest Australian hatchery produce 300,000 juveniles per month with a staff of sixteen university educated operators. The precise feeding system developed resulted in each female yabby averaging 1,500 juveniles harvested over three consecutive breeds, per season. The main Australian yabby research facility at the Warrnambool Deakin University research station at the same time was averaging 300 eggs limited to one breed per season.

A world first live storage system was designed with cool moist conditions for holding yabbies alive for months. (In the wild they have been recorded hibernating for up to eighteen years under the Nullabor plains.) The effect of this invention was to turn a muddy creature into a gourmet animal with a guaranteed supply. This resulted in lifting the price from $5/kg to $20+/kg over a period of three months for the local and export markets.

In 2002 heading a team of twelve volunteer entrepreneurs and scientists David developed a US$150 million cooperative fish farming plan spanning the Pacific from Milne Bay Papua New Guinea, to Solomon Islands, Marshall Islands and Fiji. This involved eighteen environmentally monitored sea cage farms, for Yellowfin Tuna and indigenous fish species developed consecutively over five years. It was supported by full processing, shipping and single desk sales outlets in the US, Europe and Asia. The GFC in 2007 dried up the available humanitarian funding before the project could be actioned.

Business Certification – David ran a Quality Assurance training and certification business in Cairns for three years for Ferriby Marine. He was a qualified auditor for quality, safety and environmental codes and organised regular workshops for the English certification company.

Environmental rehabilitation – In the early 2000’s he was Business Manager for an environment rehabilitation company in Cairns, stabilising soils and embankments in the harsh tropical conditions for mines, road builders and industry.

Fabric structures – He also owns a fabric structure business, Taurus Fabric Build, marketing and installing tension membrane buildings up to 40m wide. These are used for maintenance facilities, truck depots and bulk materials storage for the mining, aviation, marine, agriculture and logistic industries in Australian and the Southern Hemisphere.

Education – David has Diplomas in Farm Management and Building and he completed the Leadership 21 certificate with Melbourne University.