According to the organizers, the people of China and Australia have forged a longstanding amicable bond, and cultural exchange serves as the inexhaustible driving force for the development of China-Australia relations.

The organizers aspired to promote China-Australia exchange and forge even stronger bonds of friendship between the two countries through the "Rendezvous with the Orchid" event, so as to contribute to enriching world civilizations and strengthening China-Australia comprehensive strategic partnership.

Carrillo Gantner, an adjunct professor at the Australia-China Institute for Arts and Culture, Western Sydney University, is the Inaugural Orchid Awards' Friendship Envoy Award winner. He said that the orchid award he had received is not so much a personal honor but an acknowledgment of the role of artists and cultural workers as the true friendship ambassadors.

"Artists believe in the potential for good, for richer and more positive relations between individuals and therefore between countries," he said.

Nothing is more important and challenging than the creation of understanding and trust between individuals from vast, different backgrounds. Relationships between countries, after all, are the sum total of all such personal relationships between the peoples on each side, Gantner said.

"So the responsibility of each of us as individuals is to do what we can to add our single bricks of friendship, to the great wall of trust that we must build between our countries," he added.