Bondi Local | Chrissy Ynfante

Bondi Local | Chrissy Ynfante

Melanie was introduced to Chrissy by Jane Turner who thought she’d make a great interview subject. Chrissy is the Community Services Manager at Norman Andrew’s House, a community drop-in centre on Roscoe Street in Bondi.

Melanie chatted to Chrissy at Gertrude & Alice Bookstore Café.

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Hi Chrissy, can you please give us a little bit of your background?

I was born in Darlinghurst at St Margaret’s Hospital. My parents had immigrated from the Philippines. Mum’s half Spanish and half Filipina and Dad is Spanish but was born in the Philippines. They came out here when mum was pregnant with my older brother because they didn’t want to start a family under the Marcos regime, and so they were looking for a better place to start their family. They had been working for Qantas and so Australia seemed like the natural place to go. They lived in Randwick until I was 4 when they bought their first house, where they still are, in Hurstville where I grew up, until I went to Wollongong for uni. When I came home again, Bondi was the natural place after having lived at the beach. That was the beginning of 1994 and I haven’t moved away since! Why? What for!

Full-on, locked on Bondi-ite!

Now you are working at Norman Andrew’s House. How did that come about?

That came about because at the time I was probably holding down about four jobs. I’ve always liked a lot of variety in my life!

One of those jobs had me doing styling and interview technique and mentoring Aboriginal people in pre-employment programmes in Sydney, Arnhem Land and Darwin. I learnt so much and I really loved supporting and advocating for people who were struggling and I thought that I would really love to do something in my own community. By coincidence the woman who was running the centre was one of the mums at school and she knew what I was doing. She rang me in 2009 to tell me that she was looking for somebody like me who was doing the kind of work that I was doing to work at Norman Andrew’s two days a week. I went in and did an interview and started straight away. I was a casual community worker two days a week. It was baptism by fire. It was like nothing I had done before.

It’s slowly gone from two to three days to permanent part time to managing the centre. Now I’m full time running the programme there.

Norman Andrew’s House, unbeknown to a lot of locals probably, has been around for about 27 years. It was started by a woman called Fran Wootton who was community minister at Chapel by the Sea. She saw a great need to support our disadvantaged members of the community. Bondi was not always the affluent place it is today. There were a lot of people in need, living in public housing, homeless, mental health issues etc. She started the drop-in centre for them. I’s been a little bit more formalised since then. 

We open Monday to Friday, and on a very basic level we offer free breakfast and free lunch – all well-balanced, nutritious meals. We have facilities for them to have a shower and they can also do laundry. So on that really basic level, on things that we probably take for granted, it’s amazing how being given a bar of soap and a razor and being able to have a shower, how much dignity that can give a person.

As well as the social contact …

I think people primarily come for that. We’re like a family here.

We also have an emergency clothing supply so that if the only thing they own is on their back we can give them clothes to either wear while their clothes are being washed or they can keep them. There’s a telephone for free local calls. Plus we have a team of community workers that assist them one-on-one, to assist them getting housing, with Centrelink, help them find jobs.

I help them with advocacy in the legal system. I support a lot of people in court. Without somebody painting a full picture of why a person has got to where they are – quite often it’s only the charge that they see and what, perhaps has led to it. I can advocate quite strongly and I’ve had lots of success with that.

We encourage people into drug and alcohol rehabilitation as well. And we also run programmes like trivia and bingo, and art. We’re starting a make-up and hair course for the ladies. We have a balcony garden that they can do. We have recreational therapy which is what’s become essentially a communal scrabble game! That kind of activity helps with literacy and the conversation that flows over those sorts of programmes, while it’s generally informal, we tend to find that that’s the best way to find out information about our visitors. We can then pull them aside to talk about whatever has come up to offer support.

Other times it’s people coming in in absolute crisis. They come in, everything has gone wrong, and we just drop everything and assist that person.

It’s a really colourful place. There’s lots of laughter. They have a great sense of humour. Many of them are Bondi, born and bred, so they hold a lot of interesting history; back in the days of the Astra and stories like that that I find fascinating.

We need to be in contact with some of those people. They are the kinds of stories that we want to find and record!

It’s so interesting what you do and such an incredible resource for the community.  Is there much interaction with the local community?

Yes, that’s something that I am always trying to build. We couldn’t do what we do without the volunteers. So while we have a small team that’s paid we have many volunteers who help keep the cogs turning. We also have some great local businesses like Gertrude & Alice and Lox, Stock and Barrel who donate leftovers to us. We’ve got a new one. Legendary Tony Gosden who is Bondi Tony. He had donated $100 and I went to thank him personally and he said “what time is lunch? I want to do something. The community’s been good to me. I want to give back”. So now every Tuesday he makes 20 Angus beef burgers with chips that he cuts in half and brings them down for the visitors. I just wish I ate beef!

I do!

Well come on down. It’s Tuesday!

And then local residents will stop by and drop off food and other things. Sometimes people have had a wedding or a party or  sausage sizzle that didn’t go on because of rain and we’ll get that stuff. At Christmas, we have a lot of community engagement. Bronte Public School, St Catherine’s, do amazing work for our Christmas appeal as do Waverley Council. Bondi Beach Public [School] have in the past as well.

Tell us now a little bit about your Bondi attachment. You’ve lived here since 1994 did you say?

Yes. I ended up here after those crazy bushfires that we had that January. I was still living in Wollongong and I was contemplating moving to Sydney or to Wombarra. I had just started acting. I got stranded in Sydney because of the bushfires. Many train lines and roads were closed and I went out and saw a jazz band with all Bondi locals and ended up staying here for a few days and just thought “I think I want to come home” and so I moved here and into Warners Avenue. And I have been in Bondi or the Eastern beaches ever since.

So when I came back to Bondi I was first working up at the David Jones food court when they had just done the first refurb of it. They put in Santos coffee and I was trained as a barista. You know as an actor and director you work in lots of hospitality! So I started working there. I used to rollerblade up to Bondi Junction every morning. Couldn’t do that now. I was young!

You don’t see rollerblades anymore …

No! I used to rollerblade along the Promenade every night at about two in the morning and then be up at work at 6:30. I was in my very early 20s!

I was working for Darlinghurst Theatre Company which is now the Eternity Playhouse in Burton Street. I was a drama teacher. I was also running the acting school, producing plays and directing some plays and doing some acting work. I needed to support that income so I was working in hospitality. After travelling overseas I ended up working at Gusto and also at the Diggers. That’s when I fell pregnant. I got very big working behind the coffee machine at Gusto before I left to have the baby.

Zac was born in 2000. His dad’s an actor and a musician also so it was just ridiculous the two of us working in that industry, bringing up a child on that sort of income, so we job-shared at Caroline’s Earth Food Store. In between gigs we were there. So between us we had one full time job. That was enough for us back then. We got to co-parent quite strongly then for our little boy and that was great. But throughout that period I thought I can’t keep acting so I told my husband that I was going to pursue a life-long passion and study design. I ended up getting a job at Caravan Interiors when it was on Hall Street. And I studied colour and design theory and interior decorating. I managed Caravan Interiors for quite a long time. She’s still going on Old South Head Road and she has been in business now for about 17 years which is great. I also started my own interior design business.

When you said you have worn 25 hats, you weren’t kidding!

I loved being on Hall Street. I’ve watched it all change. I used to have a beautiful red kelpie called Ruby who was well known on the street. She used to come to work with me every day.

After that I was assisting a stylist, who I’ve seen on your blog, Bianca Polinelli. I used to work on television commercials with her.

Then I got asked to do this Aboriginal pre-employment programme in Redfern. That was a time when my acting and design came together and I was doing interview role-playing skills and some personal grooming assistance. My world exploded open. I had never learnt about Aboriginal history at school, in fact I was terrified of Redfern, and there I was working in the thick of it.

I had one bad and terrifying experience early on but I didn’t want that to put me off. Instead it sent me the other way and I decided I wanted to do more community work and less design.

Now I feel really good about what I do. I’m passionate when I get up in the morning. I still do the odd design job here and there when I can fit it in. I style the odd wedding for friends or people I like but that’s just a little side thing that I do. Primarily now I’m at Norman Andrew’s House – now [run by] Wayside Chapel which is exciting. I used to do theatre at Wayside Chapel so that feels really good.

So you’re part of that family …

So to flip the switch a bit, where do you eat and drink in Bondi?

I get my coffee every morning at Gertrude & Alice. And I eat here as well. I have always loved the atmosphere. It reminds me of Shakespeare and Co from my time in Paris. It’s like being wrapped up in the arms of the same sort of ambience that exists there.

I also go to the Earth Food Store. The food’s really great there. And I always have a laugh there with Mel who’s been there for 6 years. She’s great but she’s leaving! I love having breakfast at bills as well. How good are those scrambled eggs? And my son really likes the wagyu burger so we’ll go in there some times for a treat. I’ve become such a creature of habit as I’ve gotten older. I still like going up to the RATS. My old neighbours will come together. We all used to live on Ramsgate together and have these street parties – so we go up there – it’s cheap and cheerful and you can have the kids there.

I like downstairs as well. North Bondi Fish is delicious. And Sean’s – I’ve always loved. I can’t afford to go there anymore, but I love it. The other place I also love is Lox Stock and Barrel. I think the food there is top notch: for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

A Tavola, again for a special occasion. I really, really love the food there.

One last question, do you have a motto for life?

Yeah I think it’s, and I’m afraid that I’m going to sound so bloody corny now, but it’s just to: “Live, love and laugh”. I don’t think you can take things too seriously. Certainly one thing that my work has taught me is that I have really very little to grumble about so I try not to complain because, you know …________________________

Full interview on SoundCloud below or HERE