On Saturday 18 October, Unwin Street Kindergarten celebrated 60 years of teaching and caring for children with a celebration attended by current children and families, past and present staff, and lots of special guests.
To capture the history of this much-loved kindergarten, we spoke with two long-standing and now retired Shine Bright staff members, Sue Duke and Dawn Tonkin.
Here are their stories…
A Lifetime of Love and Learning: Sue’s 52 Years at Unwin Street Kindergarten
When Sue first walked through the doors of Unwin Street Kindergarten more than half a century ago, she was just nineteen – fresh from her Mothercraft studies and eager to work with children. What she found at Unwin Street was more than just a workplace. It was a home.
I felt at home immediately. There was such a loving, warm, welcoming atmosphere.
Sue Drake at the Unwin Street 60 year celebration.
That feeling stayed with her for 52 years. Through generations of families, countless little faces, and decades of change in early education, Sue became part of the very fabric of Unwin Street Kindergarten – a place that has been nurturing young learners for 60 years.
Sue grew up in Kyabram and, after leaving home at the end of Year 9 she finished her schooling in 1969 as a boarder at Methodist Ladies’ College in Melbourne. She recalls one eventful night where, along with three dorm buddies, she was forced to spend part of the night sleeping on the floor of the Boarding House Mistress.
“It was a strict lights-out policy at 9pm, even when we were in Year 11. On one fateful night our refusal to be quiet after lights-out resulted in a very uncomfortable night on the Boarding House Mistress’ floor,” she laughs.
Sue trained in Mothercraft Nursing at the Queen Elizabeth Home for Women in Carlton. The program gave her hands-on experience nurturing children, many of them wards of the state.
“We were each allocated a child to nurture so we could give them extra love and care,” she says. That experience cemented her desire to work with children and led her naturally into early childhood education.
Sue began as a teaching assistant at Unwin Street Kindergarten and never left. Over the years, she worked across other Shine Bright kindergartens including Fenaughty Street and Girgarre, but Unwin Street was always her professional and personal home.
She fondly remembers spontaneous kindergarten days;
Former Carlton Refuge – Queen Elizabeth Maternal & Child Care Health Centre – in Keppell Street, Carlton, where Sue did her Mothercraft nursing studies.
“We were each allocated a child to nurture so we could give them extra love and care,” she says. That experience cemented her desire to work with children and led her naturally into early childhood education.
Sue began as a teaching assistant at Unwin Street Kindergarten and never left. Over the years, she worked across other Shine Bright kindergartens including Fenaughty Street and Girgarre, but Unwin Street was always her professional and personal home.
She fondly remembers spontaneous kindergarten days.
“We’d decide on the spur of the moment to go for a walk on a nice spring day with thirty children,” Sue laughs. “We’d hear the birds and smell the flowers as we walked along happily.
There were also special visits that created lasting memories. “The fire engine used to come, and the kids would climb aboard and ride around the block. We would take an unplanned walk to visit parents who worked in the main street. It was wonderful,” she said.
Sue recalls that for many years every Friday, staff would pack up the entire room so it could be used for Sunday School, then unpack everything again on Monday. “It was just part of the rhythm of our week,” she says. recalls.
People who came to Unwin Street stayed because it was such a special place.
Over five decades, Sue saw enormous change — from class sizes of thirty children with two teachers to today’s smaller ratios, and from anxious first-timers clinging to parents’ hands to confident little learners ready to explore.
“When I started, kindergarten was often a child’s first time away from home,” she says. “Now, children are used to being out and about. They’re less anxious but perhaps a little more tired – life is so busy now.”
Through it all, Sue stayed committed to the same simple joy that first drew her in: helping children learn, laugh, and feel safe. Her own children, nieces, and nephews all attended Unwin Street, making her story part of a true family legacy.
Now retired, Sue still walks down the street and is recognised by generations of former kinder kids, now parents and even grandparents themselves.
“It’s been a wonderful career,” she said.
As Unwin Street Kindergarten celebrates its 60th anniversary, it’s impossible to tell its story without Sue’s name woven through it. Her 52 years of dedication remind us that while much has changed in early learning, the heart of Unwin Street — warmth, care, and community — remains exactly the same.
Guests at the Unwin Street 60 year celebration with Robyn Campbell (current Nominated Supervisor/Educational Leader), Sue and Dawn in the front row.
The precious kinder years: Dawn’s 30 Years at Unwin Street Kindergarten
I’ve always liked children is just about the perfect response from someone who is asked what first drew them to into a profession of teaching and care.
Dawn Tonkin has spent her life in kindness, including thirty years as a kindergarten assistant at Shine Bright’s Unwin Street kindergarten which recently celebrated its 60-year milestone.
“I started babysitting at age fifteen and in some ways, never really stopped,” Dawn said when describing her motivation for a lifelong career working with children.
Dawn Tonkin at the Unwin Street Kindergarten 60 year celebration.
What began as an instinctive love of caring for little ones became a vocation. At age nineteen, Dawn left home in Kyabram and moved to Broadmeadows to train as a Mothercraft Nurse at the St Joseph’s Babies’ Home, later to become the St Joseph’s Foundling Hospital which established a mothercraft training school, providing much-needed infant care education.
Her years of work in Melbourne were hands-on, working in hospitals, maternity wards, and babies’ homes, and training alongside dozens of young women who, like her, had chosen a life centred on nurturing children. They lived under the watchful eyes of the nuns, lights out by 10pm, with only one night a week to venture out. Money was tight. Mothercraft nurses earned $5 per fortnight, and it cost Dawn $5.10 to travel home to visit her parents. But the friendships forged in those dorm rooms were priceless and remain with Dawn to this day.
St Joseph’s Babies Home in Broadmeadows in the 1960’s, where Dawn studied Mothercraft Nursing from 1972 – 1973. The site is now occupied by Penola Catholic College.
The work was often confronting. Alongside their training, the young nurses crossed paths with unmarried mothers also living at the Broadmeadows campus, sent there – and sometimes hiding there – to wait for their babies to be born and adopted.
“We weren’t allowed to talk to the mothers beyond a quick hello,” Dawn recalls.
“The nuns were concerned that word might get back to families about unwanted pregnancies, so secrecy was complete. It was a sad situation. The mothers went to hospital to have their babies and then straight home. We never saw them again.
“I still can’t watch shows like Call the Midwife because it brings back sad memories,” Dawn said.
Dawn’s career stretched across hospitals, daycare centres, and a stint in Perth with two girls who she had completed her eighteen-months of mothercraft training with. She recalls lining up to use the public phone box at the end of the street once per week to ring home for three minutes, which is all the girls could afford.
Dawn with her son Simon, and Granddaughter Isadora, unveiled the 60 year celebration plaque.
Eventually, her career came into the heart of her own home, where she ran Family Day Care while raising her four children. It was in 1988, when she walked through the doors of Unwin Street Kindergarten as an assistant, that she truly found her professional place. She stayed for 30 years.
“When I first started, kindergarten was often a child’s very first step out into the wider world,” she explains. “It was special – for them, and for their parents. Families were very connected to one another and the kindergarten.
“We could leave something like a broken wheelbarrow outside the kindergarten, and it would be picked up by one of the father’s, fixed and returned,” Dawn recalls.
Today, Dawn observes, many children arrive at kinder already accustomed to busy schedules – dance classes, swimming, and the like. For many children, kindergarten is another stop in the week.
And yet, in all the change, one truth has remained: the heart of early learning is in play and in relationships.
“At kinder, the most important thing children gain is social skills. Learning to share, be part of a group, to wait your turn. Children will learn letters and colours, and that is important, but those things only matter if they can connect with others.
Kindergarten remains a good place to be and is just as important now as it has been in the past.
Dawn’s favourite part of the work has always been the children themselves.
“They’re sponges. They are interested in everything – a bird in the tree, a flower in the garden, what they did on the weekend. They’re honest – sometimes brutally so, and I have been told many times that I have crooked teeth. But people who know me well know that I’d rather be with children than adults! You know exactly where you stand with a child,” she says.
Unwin Street Kindergarten, which was previously a church hall, became a second home not only for Dawn but for her own family. All of her children passed through its doors and now her granddaughter attends Unwin Street. She still lights up recalling the stage in the hall, with its big, orangey-brown velvet curtain, where generations of children have performed and continue to perform, end-of-year concerts.
Now retired, Dawn’s days are full, with ten grandchildren and the joy of family life. But her conviction for early years care and learning hasn’t wavered.
The children love that stage. Sometimes it’s the library, sometimes it’s a hospital or a post office. It can be anything they can imagine, and they love performing on it.
I still believe that kindergarten is the best thing for little ones, and the kinder years are the most beautiful time to be with children.
Dawn with family members at the Unwin Street Kindergarten 60 year celebration.