Welcome to the page for The Laurie Starling Scholarship for Innovation and Excellence in Automotive Fabrication. The “Laurie Award” is a scholarship gifted to one budding aspiring engineer or fabricator each year. Chosen on the basis of merit by a selection panel and handed out at the Summernats car festival in Canberra, it will provide financial support to a person undertaking a Certific
ate III, IV or Diploma in the fields of vehicular fabrication or engineering. This person has to demonstrate exceptional drive, commitment and desire to excel in their learning of technical and design skills, as well as their practical implementation. We hope the Scholarship will assist in getting a solid start on that journey, one that Laurie exemplified in his own short, but quite extraordinary, life. His passion for engineering and vehicle fabrication could be seen in everything that came out of his business, The Chop Shop – from the simplest component to groundbreaking builds that have gone on to take the highest awards in custom car building in Australia, including Summernats Grand Champion and Street Machine Of The Year from Street Machine Magazine. However, Laurie was also generous with his time and never missed an opportunity to help other young people learn the tools of the trade. Laurie was given many nicknames during the course of his busy life, but one that stuck was “Curious George”. Right from the start he showed a great interest in taking things to pieces and putting them back together again, in a way that he reckoned improved the way they worked. He was a watcher, a thinker and definitely a doer; while he was finishing one project he was already planning the next. If there was no prototype he’d create one, and little did we know that the junkyard in the backyard (and the living room, the garage and his bedroom too!) was actually where he was preparing for his career. Lego models, rockets, water slides, cubby houses, modified skateboards, low-rider bikes... His parents were constantly relieved that nothing major blew up or fell down, although the local medical centre and X-ray department got to know him a bit too well. When he was tragically taken from us in July 2014, his family, friends and colleagues pulled together to create something that would serve as a lasting legacy to these wonderful attributes. You can read more about the application process and criteria at www.laurieaward.com
