The Kuys to the hills

Robyn and Bill Kuys have seen their dream for Chandler Reserve become a reality. 146362 Picture: RUSSELL BENNETT

“A football club is a second family, and many people have probably said that about Emerald – especially with the year we’ve had this year.” – Robyn Kuys

 

Bill and Robyn Kuys are larger-than-life Emerald icons, with even bigger hearts. They sat down with RUSSELL BENNETT to explain just why they’re so in love with their hills community.

 

BILL and Robyn Kuys moved to the hills from Noble Park in the mid-1980s. They bought their block of land the week after the 1983 Ash Wednesday bushfires, and have since become an iconic Emerald couple.
They’ve put their blood, sweat and tears into the Emerald Sporting Club and finally securing an upgrade to the clubrooms at the Bombers’ Chandler Reserve base.
And now their dream has become a reality – with construction work recently beginning on the long-awaited, often delayed project – they can finally take stock of what it means for the town.
Bill and Robyn have been married for 43 years. They moved to Emerald in 1984, and immediately got involved in the local football scene through their sons.
They’d already been involved in the Noble Park junior set-up, and they then went on to pour more than 15 years of dedication into the Emerald juniors as coach, timekeeper, secretary, team manager – you name it, they did it.
And they’ve both got life memberships to show for it – as well as that same honour from the senior football club, where Bill was president and where the couple are both still fixtures.
“It was actually better to buy before the bushfires than after,” Bill said of his family’s move to the hills from Noble Park.
“The day of the bushfires everything doubled in value because everybody was coming up here to pick out the burnt-out bargains.”
Robyn admits that, with four young children, the bushfires delayed the family’s move.
“We had to make the decision to either stay where we were or come up here,” she said.
“Financially we just couldn’t afford to keep the block. We built a house and Bill said ‘in six months, if you don’t like it we’ll go back’.”
The pair moved in on the Saturday, and by Sunday morning Robyn’s mind was made up … they weren’t going anywhere.
“One night was all it took me,” Robyn said with a smile.
“I said I was never going back because I just love it here.”
Robyn and Bill really are soulmates. It’s clear to see.
“We’ve been married 43 years, but we’re the best of mates first and we do get along really well, and we do everything together because I’m the concept person – the umbrella person – and she’s the i-dotter and t-crosser,” Bill said.
“Between the two of us we do a good job.”
That’s putting it mildly. They haven’t had any of their children play at the Emerald Football Club for the past four or five years, but their motivation is different now.
“You go walking down the street now and you get guys who say g’day to you with their wife and two or three kids, and they appreciated whatever you did to get them off the streets and to give them some activity and something to get involved with,” Bill said.
“Our son finished playing football four or five years ago but we’ve continued on because that’s our driving force – to get that new facility upstairs – and to give something to the community so they can actually get off the streets and come and use it.”
The $730,000 project to upgrade the Chandler Reserve clubrooms has been, by Bill’s own admission, a rollercoaster. It’s had peaks and troughs at every turn, but at no stage did he or Robyn – or anyone else involved in the Emerald Sporting Club committee for that matter – put it in the too hard basket or consider giving up.
“It’s to make this club survive,” Bill said simply, from Chandler Reserve recently.
“The football club has to survive, the cricket club has to survive, and the netball has to survive because if it doesn’t survive the kids will be out on the street and looking for something to do and maybe get into strife.
“Here they’ve got an out, they’ve got a lot of mates, they’ve got a lot of life-long friends that they make here and it’s extremely important.”
Bill and Robyn’s son Blair is a professor in industrial design, and his journey has never been easy. But he’s played more than 300 games of football and Robyn says the comradeship and mateship he got out of the club played a big part in keeping him going through all those years of study.
“A football club is a second family, and many people have probably said that about Emerald – especially with the year we’ve had this year,” Robyn said.
But the Emerald football scene, particularly, hasn’t always been that unified. In fact, it once needed somewhat of a culture change to bring the senior and junior arms together.
“When we took it over we tried to make it into a family club, and that’s continued on,” Robyn said of Bill’s past tenure as president.
“We were the first club in Victoria to get gold accreditation through the AFL with the Quality Club and Good Sports program.
“We were a Level 3 Good Sports program here and that was cutting down on the alcohol and getting funds another way.”
While the project to upgrade the rooms at Chandler Reserve is budgeted for $730,000, a staggering $500,000 worth of volunteer work will also be done by a small army of tradespeople with direct links to the club. That sums up Emerald, and its sporting scene, in a nutshell.
“A lot of people have had a look at it, and a lot of people have shelved it,” Bill said of the plan.
“It’s a big project and I don’t think anybody had the time or inclination to really follow it all through.
“But it was something that I committed to back in 2006 when I was president of the senior football club.
I said ‘Look, that is what the club needs – it’s what the cricket club needs for them to survive because the social functions and everything else that are being held have all been outsourced to other areas and they don’t make the profits they could if they ran them themselves’.
“For survival and for the clubs to continue on it’s something that the clubs just had to have.”
And with the continued strength of the sports clubs based at Chandler Reserve, Bill and Robyn can rest assured. In their own words, their favourite part of being so heavily involved in Emerald has always been “seeing people develop”.
“I mean both young people and adults – people who we’ve virtually had to drag in to do something, only to see them develop confidence and then see them become really good community people,” Bill said.
And you won’t find two better community people than Bill and Robyn Kuys.