When Kylie Gaston arrived in Warrnambool about 15 years ago, she didn’t know anyone. But the way people rallied when three months later a terrifying axe attack left her husband in intensive care made her fall in love with the place.

After 11 years of Parisian living, Kylie had started to miss her family and wanted her girls, Ana and Armelle, to experience that Aussie childhood.

After growing up in Adelaide, a move to Warrnambool was not even on her radar. In fact she hadn’t even heard of the place until she was visiting her brother in Port MacDonnell one Christmas.

He’d suggested they drop in on their way to the airport. So they did. 

A calendar with a picture of Warrnambool that they’d picked up sat on the fridge in their Paris apartment for the more than two years it took for them to organise themselves for the move home, which included finishing the little French houses they’d been renovating on weekends.

Kylie had met her husband in Adelaide. A self-confessed professional student at the time, Kylie was also working full-time in a large restaurant when Frenchman Jean-Philippe began working there.

After starting an arts degree and swapping to speech pathology, Kylie finished a communications degree at a time when it was becoming trendy. And when Jean-Philippe asked her to join him backpacking through America, she said yes.

They ended up in Paris where the plan was to stay for two years. “But life became Parisian I suppose,” she said. She and Jean-Philippe married in Normandy at the ruins of an 11th century monastery.

Kylie worked in a bilingual bookstore at a time before the internet and Amazon got big. “It was the most magnificent book store. I’ve loved books my whole life, loved libraries. I ran the English department for kids’ books and I have to say it was probably one of the most fun jobs I ever had,” she said.

She then took a job at the prestigious American University of Paris as an academic and recruitment coordinator for the department of continuing education.

After Kylie had her children, she decided to do the Aussie thing and stay home with the kids which was not the norm for most French mums.

“Paris is wonderful without kids and with lots of money,” she said.

“I’d been there 11 years and I was hankering for a backyard, funny things like wanting to cook dinner while watching the kids play.”

They’d forgotten about Warrnambool when they returned to Australia and applied for jobs in Sydney. It was while visiting Kylie’s parents in Naracoorte that they picked up a copy of a regional magazine that featured a Warrnambool restaurant on the cover. It was for sale and they decided to buy it. “We knew no one in Warrnambool,” she said.

She laughs recalling how when filling in the emergency contact form at the girls’ new school she used the lawyer’s name because she didn’t know anyone else. “Lucky he never got a call,” she said.

They’d only been in business at Beach Babylon for three months when, after they’d finished cleaning up after a busy night, they heard a noise at the back door. Kylie was helping out that night because her parents were visiting and could look after the kids.

The couple was having pizza around midnight when two men broke into the back of the restaurant.

“It was pretty scary,” she said. “They’d broken the lock to get in.”

While Jean-Philippe was trying to keep the door shut, he managed to give his phone to Kylie who called the police, but they managed to bust the door open. 

Her husband picked up the axe, used to chop wood for the pizza oven, to chase them but they turned on him and grabbed the axe.

“I do remember when the axe went up and they had him on the ground I remember thinking ‘oh good it’s the blunt end’ as it came down,” she said. “But that then perforated his ribs into his liver.

“He got up somehow and they got an empty glass bottle and smashed it over his head. I’m screaming at this point ringing 000.”

The neighbours living above the restaurant came to their aid and then the police arrived.

“Three months into being in Warrnambool, I’m not meant to be that involved in the restaurant because I’m the young mum and he’s been carted off to intensive care in Melbourne,” she said.

“So then I had to run a restaurant. The silver lining was that Warrnambool people were so kind.

“I still get teary thinking about it.

“We had all these people coming in for dinner who never would have come in. 

“It was really amazing and, in a weird way, it really integrated us into the community.”

When the global financial crisis hit, the business, like so many others, took a hit and they branched out into catering.

When they won the tender for the Port Fairy Surf Lifesaving Club, their lives got even busier.

“I think that was the craziest year of my life trying to run both with little kids,” she said.

“We knew we had to sell Beach Babylon.”

That’s when Kylie decided to run for council, and to do it she wore through a couple of pairs of shoes door-knocking residents. But it paid off and in 2012 she was voted onto council.

“It’s a great privilege,” she said.

“It wasn’t an easy council but I just decided I had to work on myself and try and make the best decisions I could.”

Kylie successfully ran for a second term on council and won. She describes her two stints as mayor as the most wonderful experience.

During her term as mayor she had to fight to keep the Deakin University campus from leaving town. “I moved here because it was a university city, no way was that going to happen,” she said. 

She said she still remembers telling the vice-chancellor that it was going to be a fight, and that’s exactly what they got.

After finishing up as mayor just over a year ago, she was appointed to run the integrated water management forum and also serves on the hospital board.

Kylie said she had always had an interest in politics, even at university.

She said she always voted progressively but considered herself more of an independent, but then she was approached to run for the Labor party at the state election.

Having seen the Andrews government in action when she was at Spring Street during her time as mayor, she said she agreed to run.

“When you have a government who’s prepared to do things with momentum, the last thing you want to do is put a brake on that.

“I thought I would love for them to get back in. I believed in the values. I was thrilled Tafe had been revitalised, education, health, fairness, giving people jobs and a go. I could see the economy was starting to crunch so I thought ‘why don’t I?’

“When I went to my first meeting I thought ‘yes this is where I belong, this is where my values sit’. As policies like funding three-year-old kinder came out it just made it easier and easier to campaign for Labor’s victory.

“Once I got my flyers I went back to the classic, I’m going to door-knock.

She said she door-knocked every weekend from Nelson to Panmure.

Kylie admits that she didn’t think she’d get as close to winning as she did. There was just 1901 votes the difference between the two parties after preferences.  

“You always have a hope that you might just fluke it, but no,” she said.

“I didn’t think we’d get this close. I wanted to rock the boat. I wanted to be a distraction. I thought if I could run a strong campaign and have them having to put resources in behind Roma (Britnell) which they normally wouldn’t have to, then that’s a good thing.”

Kylie hasn’t ruled out a second tilt at office. “Maybe next time, Why not? We’ll see what happens,” she said.

“I really sincerely wish Roma well in getting every success she can for our region over the next four years. It’s about our region. It’s about our community.

“I had a wonderful time, the more I kept going the more it felt right and I was absolutely thrilled with the result.”

She said for an area that traditionally voted Liberal, she said she wanted to make it OK and worthwhile voting Labor.