Two of the requirements for a 4-H cake decorating contest is to choose 3 of the 12 and it has listed " English Style" and " Australian Style". I am not sure what that would be. Can any of you explain this?

Well, I've had a lot of classes and I've never heard of "English" style decorating, unless they mean "American" vs. Australian, or they could be referring to several decorating techniques pioneered by British decorators, Joseph Lambeth and Nirvana.

Australian usually refers to curtain stringwork done either on a piped bridge or bridgeless. It's considered a rather advanced process and isn't something that most novices could do well enough to happy with in the end.

As for American, that would be the piping that you see like shell borders, ruffles, etc. Drop strings would fall into this category. You can find examples and tutorials on all of this at Wilton.com

As for Lambeth and Nirvana, Lambeth is a style of heavy overpiping, built up lattice work, royal icing cages, etc. Again, labor intensive, considered quite advanced, and hard to do well without a lot of piping experience. Nirvana is a method of flooding large cut out panels of RI and then decorating those--advanced, labor intensive, hard to do well without experience.

HTH
Rae

Sounds like 4-H has set the bar pretty high, huh? That piping work is stunning.

Wow, just Wow!! I can only dream of being that good!

English style is probably Royal Icing

Australian style is probably Rolled fondant with piping

It would be better if she asked the organizers what is meant by the terms ..