From London to Legerwood

FRESH FACES - NEW TO THE NORTH-EAST

Abby Kennerson’s new business, The Bookshop Barber, has recently opened in Main Street, Derby.

One of the North East’s newest residents has traded big cities for country charm.

And, she’s proving she’s a cut above on Derby’s Main St, as she settles into her new business, The Bookshop Barber.

Abby Kennerson grew up in Western Sydney, travelled the globe as a hairdresser and after most recently living in the Hunter Valley, she has relocated to Tasmania with husband, Mitchell Crabtree.

The couple had never been to Tasmania before they decided to buy land and a house on adjoining titles at Legerwood – population 204.

“I grew up in Blacktown City which is about a 20km radius and has over 600,000 people so more than the whole state of Tassie. In the Hunter we were in a town of about 60,000 people,” she says.

“I have met and know more people in the eight months I have been here than what I had where I grew up. Your neighbours just don’t talk to you.

“There is so much community here and people are willing to offer to help and asking for a hand isn’t an inconvenience. Everyone is so helpful.”

After moving in April the couple have well and truly settled into their new, quieter lifestyle as they establish their hobby farm with three Belted Galloways, their two dogs (a male American staffy and a female American Staffy cross Boxer), chooks and veggie gardens.

“We may even get some goats in the future. But they are all just pets – we are vegetarian,” Abby said.

“We really liked the smaller country lifestyle and we started looking for land because we wanted around five acres and you can’t by anything in NSW for under a few million dollars so we started looking around.

“I didn’t want to go to Queensland because I hate the heat - first of all it is not good for hair! We landed on Tassie and landed on Legerwood and it has been a two-year process to buy and make the move.”

With a chick quiff, piercings and tattooed sleeves, Abby embraces being a little bit alternative.

“I have had a shaved ‘number one’ buzz cut on and off for years which I love, but my mum suggested I keep my hair while I was opening up the barbershop so I didn’t scare everyone off because parts of my head are tattooed,” Abby laughs. 

“Having a shaved head came from teaching myself to cut my own hair because every now and then I would have a mishap!  It takes a lot of practice but if you can teach other people how to cut hair you can teach yourself.”

Abby started a hairdressing apprenticeship at 17 after leaving high school.

She spent nearly a decade travelling around the world including living in London for 18 months where she retrained as a barber at London School of Barbering.

“At the end of it they offered me a job teaching juniors how to cut hair,” she explains.

Her teaching career took an interesting deviation when she returned to NSW, spending the last five years working in corrective services, teaching inmates how to cut hair as part of a rehabilitation program.

“I developed a five-week program teaching barbering and had a couple of inmates leave to go on to do full apprenticeships, so I am very proud of that,” she said.

“Only a handful of people stay in jail for the rest of their lives. A lot of people have to come out and be your neighbour and date your daughter or serve you pizza or whatever.

“If we can set them up to succeed, not to fail, you have a better chance of having better neighbours.”

While she was not allowed to use scissors for safety reasons, she said she never felt threatened in the role, among high security prisoners.

“I think the tattoos were relatable. I was pretty open about where I grew up in a bit of a rough area and they can sniff somoene out who has not had lived experience.

“A friend of mine once said I think you need to have a bit of mongrel about you to work in a correctional centre and it is true. 

“If anyone had said 10 years ago that your dream job is teaching inmates how to cut hair in a jail I would not have believed them for a second, but it definitely was my dream job so it was hard to leave.”

Abby had hoped to continuethe job in Tasmania but after discussions with Ashley Youth Detention Centre she was told there was no budget for it.

“I’d rather work with teenagers from the perspective of being able to prevent them ending up as grown men in jail,” she explains.

“In the work I did with adults it was amazing. A lot of people don’t realise incarcerated adult men were once upon a time those kids who were a missed opportunity, the naughty kid at school or had a not-so-good homelife.”

While her husband works away during the week as a welder for Shaw Contracting working on railways in Southern Tasmania, Abby was deciding what to do with her new-found spare time.

“I was just going to have a rest, but I could not say to anyone that I was a barber without them asking me if I was going to open a barber shop,” she said.

And so was born The Bookshop Barber, the name stemming from a previous use of the building.

“I wanted something catchy and I started researching what this building used to be because obviously Derby
has such a rich and fascinating history with mining and I found it used to be a general store a hundred years ago,” she explains.

“It has been a sweet shop, it has been a leadlight window shop hence the leadlight out the front, it was a pizza shop for a bit, it’s been a bike shop, but for 13 years it was a bookshop.

“My mum suggested The Bookshop Barber and it had a really nice ring to it. I like reading and collecting books so I decided to have the donation library so people can donate books and 100 per cent of the proceeds from the books sold go to Trowunna Wildlife Centre at Mole Creek.”

Abby also enjoys teaching yoga and sound healing, practices she hopes to integrate into her work when the new Derby Wellness Centre is constructed in the near future, just metres from her barbershop.

Abby and Mitchell pictured in NSW before their relocation to Legerwood