“Community takes people being involved” – kindergarten educator Tarryn Holland talks children’s places, accessible spaces and where to get St Kilda’s best eggs Benedict.
Tarryn Holland loves her job. As the Coordinator of St Kilda Balaclava Kindergarten – affectionately known as ‘Nelson Street’ or ‘SKBK’ by those on the inside – she heads up one of the suburb’s oldest community-run kindergartens, operating in a Balaclava back street since 1911. Tucked behind the wooden front gate lies a childhood sanctuary: an enchanted garden full of trees and vegetables, sandpits and building blocks, learning and imagination. “Every AGM I cry,” Tarryn tells me, “because I just love the families, the people. We are so lucky in this magical little pocket, with this beautiful space.”
Her life path could have led elsewhere. Growing up in Sydney, the young Tarryn wanted to be a lawyer, but when she was 16 her parents moved the family to the Sunshine Coast, shifting her from a Catholic girl’s school where she was excelling academically to the local Caloundra High. “It was a big move,” she says, “and dealing with all of that, I didn’t do as well as I might have.” Instead of law, she started a psychology degree but hated it. When an Australian friend living in Germany suggested she come over and work as an au pair, she jumped at the opportunity and discovered a passion for working with young children.
“It’s funny – growing up Mum always said, ‘you’d be a really good teacher’, and I was like no, nuh,” she says. But sometimes mothers see what we can’t. After five years working in Germany, Tarryn, then 23, moved home to Australia and decided to study early childhood education. The Sunshine Coast felt “waaaaay too quiet”, so she flew to Melbourne, enrolled at Swinburne University and moved into an apartment on Grey Street with friends. It was the beginning of two love affairs: one with her vocation, the other with St Kilda.
Over the years, Tarryn has worked at most of Port Phillip’s childcare centres: The Avenue, Elwood Children’s Centre, Eildon Road and now SKBK. “In terms of education in this country, we’re so privileged as a sector to have more individuality,” she enthuses, “whereas school is run by government, it’s more constrained.” Education, she says, has always been political, and SKBK is committed to supporting children to become moral citizens. “The kinder is really strong in its values,” she says, “and open about what we value and not backing down from that. We will have conversations around reconciliation; we will support gay marriage. We’re confident to say, well, if you don’t agree with these values, that’s fine, but this isn’t the place for you.”
During her 21 years in St Kilda, Tarryn has had a few different addresses. From Grey Street, she moved to a flat above a lighting shop on the corner of Alma and Brighton Roads, then Cardigan Street, followed by a two-year stint renting in Ormond after the arrival of her second child. But when the time came to buy, St Kilda had her heart. “My partner’s a northsider originally, but I was not going northside,” she laughs. “I was like, ‘We are going back to St Kilda!’”
The couple now live on Alma Road with their two daughters. Because of her job and community involvement (she is also president of the Ripponlea Primary School Council), Tarryn is constantly bumping into people she knows, sometimes to the frustration of her daughters: “Mum! You know everyone! Just stop talking, can we go somewhere?”
But it’s this network of relationships that she cherishes. “It’s important for your own children to see how a community works,” she says, “how you meet people in the street and chat and help each other out. It’s important for them to see you being engaged in community. So that they have that when they’re older.”
Though she loves St Kilda’s vibrancy, Tarryn thinks there’s room for improvement, especially in terms of safety and accessibility. She would like to see a safe crossing point on Inkerman Street, as well as bike lanes that take the users of mobility scooters into account – Tarryn has Pompe Disease and uses a scooter to travel longer distances. “My partner is a cyclist, I’m not anti-bike lanes,” she says, but the recent proposed plans for Inkerman Street “had all these concrete blocks, which, if you need to quickly cross the road, you just can’t.”
Navigating the narrow footpaths of Balaclava on a scooter is challenging. “Bin day is a nightmare,” says Tarryn. “Tuesdays I won’t go out on my scooter.” The frequent dumping of rubbish adds extra difficulty; there are times when she simply scoots down the middle of the road and hopes a car doesn’t hit her. Five years ago Tarryn visited Hawaii, which, with its “beautiful sloping gutters” she describes as “heaven in terms of accessibility,” especially compared to Melbourne, a city with infrastructure that was “developed when disabled people were hidden away.” She appreciates the new accessible tram stop on Carlisle Street, but points out that there’s only one, and she has to wait for a low-floored tram.
Tarryn is also shocked at the new retail building at 308-312 Carlisle Street, currently housing Schnitz and Hunky Dory. “Every single one of those shops has steps to get into it,” she marvels, “and that’s a new building. How did they get planning permission?” There is, she acknowledges, a way to get in from the back, but accessibility was clearly an afterthought in its design. “Why do I have to stand at the bottom of the steps and yell out ‘Hey, can you help me come through the back?’” bristles Tarryn. “I should be able to walk through the front like everyone else.”
Despite these day-to-day difficulties, Tarryn still finds St Kilda a great place to live. Her favourite eating spots are Yo Chi, Blencowes Milk Bar and Las Chicas (“they still do the best eggs Benedict”), and the family spend plenty of time at Luna Park. She finds the annual pass handy for a weekend afternoon with the kids: “we just go down, jump on a couple of rides, come home.”
I ask her if she’d ever move away. “I doubt it,” she says. “I mean, we live in a two-bedroom apartment – it’d be nice to have a bit more space.” But for Tarryn, a place is about the people. “Community takes people being involved,” she says. “It’s about building relationships and putting in the work and the effort and creating connection, being present because you love the place and the people.” To her, that means realising how lucky we are in St Kilda, to have places like the kindergarten, St Kilda Adventure Playground, Yalukit Willam Nature Reserve. Places like these are precious, especially in the inner city, but they need people to work to keep them strong. “These are places that give children the opportunity to be in nature and connect,” she says, “these places matter, and retaining them is really important.”
Storyteller: Isabel Robinson is a Melbourne writer and community development worker. Her words have been published in The Age, The Guardian and The Victorian Writer and she is currently working on a novel for middle grade readers with her husband, Stephen Sholl. She lives in St Kilda. www.isabelrobinson.net
