By Amy Mills
Sara Kirby, nee Groen, is in her element as she tells her daughter Estelle that her hero, Peter Pan, has come to pay her a visit and is hiding in the trees. The three-year-old listens intently, her eyes wildly scanning the towering manna gums and rolling green hills of Victoria's Mornington Peninsula before asking the Sunday Life crew to help her spot the fictional character.
"Estelle has the most incredible imagination," Kirby laughs. "When she is upset about something, she will literally calm down within seconds if I start telling her a story. Then she will turn around and run with it and she'll be one of many different characters; I spend a lot of time being Captain Hook!"
Sara Kirby and her children Estelle and EloiseCredit: Trevor King
She adds, "Of all of my 10 years in television, nothing compares to the energy required to bring up two young children."
Kirby, 33, is better known to television audiences as Sara Groen, the striking brunette with exotic looks who had a promising career with the Seven Network in Sydney, presenting the science program Beyond Tomorrow and the weather on Seven News, as well as occasional news bulletins.
Sara KirbyCredit: Trevor King
Home was in fashionable Bondi and evenings were spent at the latest restaurant or walking the red carpet at VIP events. But then, five years ago, Kirby made what some deemed a surprise decision – to resign and move to Melbourne.
In a notoriously cut-throat industry, where women don't dare take more than a few weeks of maternity leave lest they return to find their seat taken, Kirby's move was tantamount to an act of career hara-kiri. And in an era where women are constantly urged to "lean in" to their careers and "have it all", her reason for giving up the bright lights was even more surprising – she was in love.
I'm with Kirby at Yabby Lake, her husband's family's vineyard at Tuerong, and the location for the Sunday Life photo shoot. Though home is in a leafy suburb south-east of Melbourne's CBD, Yabby Lake is a sanctuary for Kirby, her husband, Clark, and their daughters Estelle, 3, and Eloise, 1.
The sleepy vineyard, named after a lake on the family farm where Clark and his sister Nina used to catch yabbies as children, is the antithesis to the adrenalin-charged world of live television and the flashy celebrity parties that accompany it.
Born in Perth to a British mother and an Australian father of Dutch-Indonesian heritage, Kirby moved to Thailand at the age of 10, where she and her brothers, Kris and Stuart, attended an international school. After almost four years in Bangkok, the tight-knit clan relocated to Queensland's Gold Coast, where Kirby, a self-confessed "competitive" teenager, excelled at sport, drama and school work.
Weekend Today news presenter Wendy Kingston, a close friend of 15 years, says Kirby was always streets ahead of her peers when it came to natural talent. "She was always the lead in musicals, she had one of the best voices in the choir," says Kingston. "She was destined for huge things right from the very beginning."
Kirby moved to Sydney for a job on the weekend children's program Saturday Disney and completed her journalism studies at Bond University by correspondence. With her natural screen presence, strong work ethic and striking looks, she was soon singled out for bigger things.
But there was a long-distance relationship to consider. She had met Melburnian Clark Kirby at university – she was 19 and he 21 – and the couple were keeping their relationship going as they commuted between the two cities. After seven years together, the distance took its toll. With neither ready for marriage, they separated.
"We realised we needed to figure out our priorities," Kirby says. "We had time apart, saw other people, but at the end of the day, we couldn't move forward with anyone else because we had something still burning there. We knew that we had to extinguish it for good or give it one more try."
In 2009 the couple reunited. But for Kirby the happy interlude was short-lived. In December of that year, just before Christmas, her youngest brother Stuart was electrocuted by a damaged cable. A grease trap had overflowed and flooded the kitchen of the cafe in Newtown, Sydney, where he had found work as a waiter only 10 days earlier while he studied economics and politics at the University of Sydney. He was 25.
Stuart's death devastated the Groen family. In fining the cafe owner $100,000, Justice Michael Walton of the Industrial Court of NSW found that the risk of electrocution was "foreseeable". The Victim's Impact Statement read out before the court by Linda Groen, Sara's mother, painted a picture of a young man who was fun-loving, caring and independent. Sara and her brother were present, but her father was too distraught to attend.
"He was a talented writer, poet and musician who shared a close relationship with his siblings and parents," Justice Walton told the court. "It is evident that the loss of Stuart continues to cause his family a profound amount of pain and suffering."
"A loss like that does change you forever," says Kirby, her voice wavering. "We were very close. I've subsequently read a lot about grief and I think the description that resonated most for me was that it was like losing a part of yourself that never grows back."
The following year Kirby quit her job and moved south. She says now that Stuart's death played a part in her decision. She credits Clark's love and support for helping her through the most difficult time in her life. The pair got engaged after a romantic proposal on the Ponte des Arts in Paris, and they married in Melbourne in 2011.
Kirby initially did some fill-in weather presenting for Melbourne's Seven News, but her heart wasn't in it. "When I first moved down, I had it in my head that I could go back and do something part-time," she said. "But then Estelle arrived [in 2011] and her arrival gave me so much clarity in terms of what I wanted to be doing. Television is competitive and you're always going, going, going, so it was lovely to have this realisation that, 'Hang on, my priority right now is my family.' "
A sister for Estelle, Eloise, was born two years later.
Kingston, who juggles a television role with two children, says, "It's a risky choice to take a week off and go on holidays in television, so I can see why people would have thought it was such a big deal for someone of Sara's calibre to step away."
But for Kirby, who friends describe as a "family person", attempting to combine motherhood with a demanding career in the media held no appeal.
"I think because I'd had that solid 10 years in TV, I was ready to step away," says Kirby. "No decision is made quickly, especially in terms of career and family, but for me after I had come to that conclusion – and I acknowledge it is a very privileged position to be in – it was a very satisfying point. I've never regretted my choice."
These days, Kirby can be found playing in the park, at swimming lessons, or pottering with the girls in their vegie patch. Weekends are often spent with extended family at Yabby Lake. It is a simpler life and one Kirby is grateful for. "It's chalk and cheese," she says of her current and former lives. "I used to be in hair and make-up for an hour or more every day and now I whip into the shower for five minutes!"
Several times during our conversation Kirby reinforces the fact that she is grateful to be in a position to be able to stay at home with her girls. Not only does she acknowledge that many women aren't in a financial position to leave work, she's aware of the fragility of life, and that every second spent with her daughters is precious. Her mother underwent surgery and subsequent treatment for breast cancer in 2005, and her mother-in-law, Mem, was diagnosed with the same disease several years later.
She says the ebullient Estelle and Eloise have been "healing" for the family in the wake of Stuart's death. "With young children, you don't have time to indulge the emotions as such, but obviously it is incredibly painful to think that my girls won't know their uncle Stu the same way I did, even though we talk about him a lot," says Kirby. "He was such an amazing creative and smart guy; the best I can do is try and instil some of those qualities in my children and live my life each day in a way that honours him and the person he was."
For all the cooking and crafting and vegetable growing that is the pleasurable side of stay-at-home mothering, Kirby is frank about the challenges. When Eloise was six months old, Kirby sought help for two afternoons a week so she could run errands and go to the gym. "I look at it that anyone who does a job 24/7 needs a break, and being a mum is no different," she says. "Whether you are at work or you're a stay-at-home parent, either way it is hard. Either way it has its ups and downs."
She finds it disappointing that there is so much criticism of women – often by other women – about work choices and parenting. "Whether you're at home or at work there's always this sense that you have to justify your decisions and there's still so much pressure to be seen to be juggling so many balls," she says.
As the shoot comes to an end, Estelle and Eloise throw their arms around their mum, who looks ethereal in a white lace dress. She beams as she confesses she'd love to add another child – possibly more – to their family. While Kirby doesn't rule out returning to work should the right opportunity arise, she's happy to trade the bright lights of television for a starring role as Captain Hook.
"I appreciate how short the time is," she says. "They are so young and have such wonderful imaginations and it is such a beautiful thing because they will get to a point where they will listen to my stories and then turn around and say, 'No Mum, that's not true!' "
Sunday Life
Photography: Trevor King. Fashion editor: Penny McCarthy. Hair and make-up: Justin Henry.
Lead-in image: Sara wears Zimmermann dress, H. Capri Positano sandals. Eloise (left) and Estelle wear Printbebe dresses.