A hugely disappiointing situation indeed. As most of us know the original australian latte art comp was held on the saturday of the australian barista comp, after the repecharge (open) heat before game day. Habib Maarbani won with a score of 30/50, Erin came 2nd (27 pts) and Con 3rd (25pts). Habib was crowned the australian champ, given the trophy and told he was off to denmark to compete for the world title. The issue however was that Nathan Wakefield had done most of the organising for the whole event and on a very, VERY sad note, had a member of his immediate family pass away. Due to these deeply tragic circumstances he was obviousely unable to attend the day. Now (and to their credit) the rest of the judges/organisers tried to muster up and get everything up and running without hiccup however, somewhere along the line, the 2007 score sheets were used to judge the competitors, not the 2008 sheets (and yes, they are quite different). After much debate it was decided that the only fair thing to do was to re-fly all the competitors back to melbourne and re-do the event from scratch, there-by makng habib's victory null and void. The comp was then re-held last sunday at cafenetics with the Con coming out victorious on the day, and hence being crowned the 2008 Australian latte art championship, and is now off to denmark latter in June. Hope this answers a few questions.
