Alex Garde slaps her hand to her face in embarrassment.
“We sound like children,” she tells husband Toby Jedwab as they describe their three-decade love story. “We were children,” he reminds her.
Thirty-odd years ago, amid fairy stones and an old oak tree named Bruce, the three-year-olds walked into Sunnyside Kindergarten in Malvern East, about to meet the loves of their lives.
Alex Garde and Toby Jedwab met at Sunnyside Kindergarten in Malvern East.Credit: Joe Armao
Neither of them can remember each other from those days – they remember sandpits and hanging from the top of a slide like Indiana Jones – but in a 1995 picture, Alex sits upright in a red vest and blue shirt next to Toby, their hands folded in their laps.
“It is quite surreal,” says Toby, now 34, looking back at his kindergarten crush.
Alex Garde and Toby Jedwab in their kindergarten photo from 1995. Credit: Joe Armao
Just like them, thousands of children have stomped in mud, climbed trees and dug veggies from community-run sessional Sunnyside Kindergarten’s expansive outdoor space over its 80 years.
It now runs a Japanese language program and has taught multiple generations of family members, as well as athletes like AFLW player Alicia Eva.
On March 30, the kindergarten will celebrate its 80th anniversary, unearth a time capsule and regale the community with its stories.
Michele Zabalegui, whose two children went to the kindergarten and who has been working as an educator there for 16 years, says the kinder gives its 108 three- and four-year-olds the tools to negotiate friendships, deal with confrontation and social situations and build resilience, as well as creating a space they feel safe in.
“We like to think that in our environment we are encouraging children to learn life skills,” she says.
Part of that environment is Bruce, an oak tree planted in 1961 by a former kindergarten student. The tree now provides shade for children to eat their lunch, limbs for climbing and crevasses to explore.
“All the children who attended kinder have climbed that tree,” Zabalegui says.
Sessional kindergarten is free, and hours fluctuate between eight and 15 a week. According to Australian Children’s Education & Care Quality Authority, in the fourth quarter of 2024 there were 3340 of not-for-profit community-managed kindergartens nationally, with 9590 for-profit providers.
After kindy, Alex and Toby remained in each other’s orbits, but during their time at McKinnon Secondary College she thought he was “a bit too cool for school”.
Kindergarten sweethearts Alex Garde and Toby Jedwab on their wedding day.
After high school, they bonded on drives to and from mixed netball and over their mutual love of football and mutual disdain for a dance floor.
“When a lot of our friends would go off and dance or whatever, we’d just be in the corner, like, talking. That’s what I do remember,” Alex says.
It was a weeknight on the nature strip out the front of Alex’s house when the then-19-year-old Toby gave her a handwritten letter.
“It said, ‘I really like you. Will you be my girlfriend? Sign here … or something’,” he says.
“He’d driven over specifically to ask me this,” Alex laughs. “This makes you sound so much like a loser. Just a declaration of love … or ‘like’.”
Toby smiles. “It was sincere.”
And amid nervous teenage energy, they shared their first kiss there on the nature strip, then later a first date at Dairy Bell ice creamery.
“I guess we got together very young, and we’ve grown up together,” Alex says.
Years later, on a hike in Clunes to a Montessori Pine affectionately called the Lollipop Tree, Toby proposed.
An oak tree named Bruce, planted by Bruce Arnold in 1961, at Sunnyside kindergarten.
“We were just sitting on this bench under the tree eating some pizza Shapes and yeah, pulled out the ring, and that was it,” Toby says.
“We sound like children,” says Alex. “Why were we eating pizza Shapes?”
The oak tree named Bruce.
“We were on a hike!”
Toby says it was “quite surreal” to look back on a photo of them as three-year-olds sitting next to each other.
Alex agrees. “I don’t necessarily believe in fate, but I don’t know, there’s something somewhat spooky about it.”
On Friday, for the first time in 30 years, Alex and Toby stood under Bruce’s green canopy again, and some things felt familiar.
Their daughter, Edie, is six months, and their three-year-old, Ned, is set to start kindergarten next year.
Could he meet his life partner there? It’s possible, says Toby.
“Ned does talk fondly of a girl called Ayla and a girl called Indy, so who knows?”
Sunnyside Kindergarten celebrates its 80th anniversary on March 30 at the Cooinda Place centre in Malvern East.
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