OUR FUTURE

The Darebin Parklands: Home to Australia's First Bush Kinder.

Let's build its future.

The Darebin Parklands helped pioneer bush kinder in Australia. Now, the kindergartens that helped lead the way — including Westgarth Kindergarten and Alfred Nuttall Memorial Kindergarten — want to secure a permanent home for it: a shared Bush Kinder campus that creates more places for local children, and establishes the Parklands as Australia’s Bush Kinder Capital.

We've come together not as a contrived partnership, but as local, independent, for-purpose organisations with a shared history in this place and a shared belief in what it could become.

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The Vision

We're proposing a shared Bush Kinder campus in the Darebin Parklands, delivering three things at once:

  • A second site — more high-quality kinder places for a growing local community, without compromising the calm, child-centred experience our families value.

  • Australia's Bush Kinder Capital — a world-class outdoor early-years education destination, on the very ground where Australian bush kinder began.

  • A Centre for Excellence — a professional learning institute that shares the deep institutional knowledge of our educators with the sector across Victoria and beyond.

Whilst humble in its origins, this is a genuinely distinctive idea — and it belongs here.

Why the Darebin Parklands

This is not a site we've chosen from a map. It's a place we already know, love and work in.

  • An enduring relationship — our kindergartens have a long-standing connection to the Parklands, and we already run our bush kinder programs here. We're not proposing to arrive; we're proposing to stay and grow.

  • The birthplace of bush kinder — the Parklands hosted Australia's first bush kinder. There is no more fitting home for its national centre.

  • The setting is the program — mature trees, open space, the creek and the bush are exactly what a bush kinder needs; they can't be recreated in a standard building.

  • Trusted local relationships — we work alongside DCMC, Darebin City Council and the Traditional Owners, and we're committed to doing this in genuine partnership.

  • A green wedge, close in — one of the last remaining genuine green wedges just 7km from the city; a bushland oasis in the middle of urban Melbourne.

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