Bianca Taylor Smith has a business card that is laminated on both sides.

It’s done this way for tradies to fit in their pockets she says. Sealing it means it won’t get wet or torn.

Such care and detail are key to the 20-year-old who late last year became South Australia’s first ever, qualified female stonemason and this week is a nominee at the State Training Awards for its Apprentice of the Year.

Deeply impressive on paper, in person Bianca is the consummate pocket rocket, articulate and enthusiastic.

Her story is one of resilience, graft and an easy-going personality.

Part of the reason she has already completed her apprenticeship she says is that she started very young, leaving Mitcham High School at 15 with the blessing of her mother Trina.

“I wasn’t academic, mum was ill and I wasn’t at school much. Mum said ‘you can leave but you have to get a job’,” said Bianca.

Needing work experience and unsure of where to head, a dab of googling brought her to the Renewal SA Works Program where she first read about a possible career in stonemasonry.

The allure was instant.

“I love this, I have got to do this I said to Mum after the first week,” she said. “I was like a unicorn, I would walk through trade school and go, ‘is that real?’”

The Works Program - which generates economic development through training and employment initiatives – was fundamental to finding her feet as a stonemason said Bianca.

The two weeks work experience that it offered via the restoration of the Adelaide Railway Station façade led not just to an apprenticeship at Heritage Stone Restoration (HSR), where she was one of just three successful applicants, but also to a deep commitment to her new career.

Being prepared always to do everything asked of her, has stood Bianca in good stead from the start.

Particularly in her first role with HSR where she spent three months spotting (the construction industry’s version of a lollipop lady whereby a worker stops and directs traffic and pedestrians around ongoing works) at Lot Fourteen, the old Royal Adelaide Hospital on North Terrace.

Her patience paid off though.

“We were high up on scaffolding at the Bice Building and the supervisor asked me if I wanted to lay some bricks. I’d never done it before but had a go,” she said.

At this point her practical experience extended to little more than swishing her trowel back and forth over a mix she was practising on but as she persisted, her confidence (and skillset) grew.

Four years on and the Bianca’s bricks are still there, on the plinth underneath the top floor, right hand window.

More work at Lot Fourteen as an apprentice undertaken, she moved onto Adelaide Railway Station, where her comfort with heights became a valuable asset across the ensuing two years.

The station is a South Australian landmark, one of its architectural peaks. Built in 1856, it has evolved to a (very) mini version of New York’s Grand Central Station, marbled floors and ornate ceilings where Bianca jacked up the scaffolding and set about her restoration remit.

“We did the station roof at weekends. There were lots of people passing by, we had the plastic covers up, doing the rendering and painting,” she said.

Unsurprisingly she was the only female working on the restoration but being a woman in a traditionally male environment has not been a challenge Bianca said.

“Mum is in sales at construction sites. I’ve always dealt with men, it’s not a problem. I’m not a trailblazer, I just get on with it.”

There is, occasionally, a welcome helping hand from other women. Take South Australia’s Quondong station, 164 kilometres from Burra and deep in pastoral land with no mobile coverage and almost no people.

It is owned by MaryLou Bishop and her husband Joe. Getting anyone to work at the 365,000 acres sheep station is a near impossible call but Bianca could not have been more upbeat about a spell in regional SA.

“She was at a Naval and Military club dinner,” recalls MaryLou of their first meeting. “There were 80 to 100 people there, all high level, but she was not intimidated. I was so blown away by her.”

Bianca’s two colleagues got up to speak first but it was the young apprentice who stole the show, her genuine enthusiasm coming to the fore, she said.

“Afterwards I went up to her. ‘I was wondering would you like to take it on?’” asked Ms Bishop of some underpinning and restoration work called for at her homestead.

Bianca headed out shortly afterwards to take a look.

“There are pics of her telling us what sort of stones you get. She came back in October last year and built a lime kiln underpinning some of the house.”

Later, Bianca arrived back with her boyfriend Saxon, a horticulturalist.

“He is now my gardener,” said Ms Bishop.

“Bianca has an incredible work ethic. There has got to be something amazing in in the way she has been brought up by her mother, (she’s) so confident.”

It soon became apparent there was significant talent underpinning Bianca’s livewire exterior said MaryLou.

“She can read the history of the buildings and identify the styles of different stonemasons. You work by the daylight. And she cleans up after herself unlike most tradies.”

And such is the connection that has formed between them, Ms Bishop is very happy to pitch in and help out Bianca when called upon.

“I go up to Quondong with my husband Joe when he’s working there and I cook breakfast, lunch and dinner for her,” she said.

It is south-west England though that has provided possibly the most unusual challenge to-date.

Exeter Cathedral is pushing 1,000-years-old and is part of the Cathedrals’ Workshop Fellowship (CWF) which runs an exchange program with FCTA-Building Careers in SA, which also happens to be the training provider for Bianca.

Earlier this year Bianca, partly sponsored by the Renewal SA Works Program for whom she is now a very proud ambassador, spent time working on the cathedral as part of the exchange program.

Her exposure to advanced carving techniques, various materials and tools alongside experienced stonemasons has significantly broadened her perspective on stonemasonry. It was a wonderful experience she said.

The smaller St Patrick’s Cathedral in Adelaide, along with Adelaide Town Hall, is now on her list of perfect places to work and to facilitate this further, Bianca has set up her own company, Taylor Made Restoration. Such is the desire to succeed that she gets up at 5am every day and work can be seven days a week.

All buildings have their own personalities Bianca believes and if you have a bad day at work, don’t fret and move on. Stonemasonry needs you.

“Don’t be afraid to fail,” said Bianca when she was in the UK. “Back home, this trade is dying and people don’t fully grasp its importance.”

Unless, of course, your laminated business card reads: Bianca Taylor Smith.