That’s Robert Klaas Kalma: busker, painter, author, retired teacher, and community character extraordinaire. At nearly 84, he’s still strumming, scribbling, and stirring up projects that many people half his age would find exhausting.
Robert never finished high school yet somehow slipped through the academic cracks and snuck into university. “I wanted in, so I just got in,” he chuckled. For years he taught, studied, and worked in schools before anyone noticed his missing credentials. When the truth emerged, instead of punishing him, the school sponsored him to complete his HSC. By then he already had degrees in sport science and psychology. Only Robert could pull off a stunt like that.
Teaching and psychology became the backbone of his career. He guided generations of Peninsula students not just with textbooks but with life lessons, grit and humour that made even the most reluctant teenagers pay attention. His upbringing was tough, including time spent on the streets, but those experiences gave him the empathy to connect with kids others might have written off. Along the way, he carved out a side career as a sports psychologist, working with elite athletes and even St Kilda Football Club in the 1990s. Helping AFL players manage pressure wasn’t so different from helping kids survive high school; it all came down to belief, discipline, and resilience.
But Robert’s true reinvention came after retirement. At 70, he was given a guitar, an instrument he had never played. Within a few years, he was a “humble busker” raising money for Red Cross on Main Street.
“The music is only part of it,” he said. “What I really love is the chat. Someone tells me their worries, someone else shares a laugh; it’s connection, and we all need more of that.”
Music, however, is just one branch of his creative life. Under the pseudonym ‘Klaas’, he has published novels including Creeping Shadows and Distant Echoes. His fiction is gritty, weaving in themes of hardship, resilience, and the power of choices, and the struggles of his characters often mirror his own .
Then there’s the painting. Each brushstroke is another reinvention, another story told in colour instead of in words or song.
And because one passion project is never enough, Robert is currently part of the Big Blue Tree Project at Mount Martha Golf Course, a striking installation designed to raise awareness of mental health. “It’s a conversation-starter,” he said. “People see it, they ask questions, and suddenly we’re talking about things that matter.”
Ask him what keeps him going in his 80s, and Robert shrugs as if the answer is obvious: curiosity. There’s always another idea, another project, another reinvention waiting around the corner. After living half a dozen lives already – teacher, psychologist, novelist, artist, busker – he’s not finished yet. “I’ve got plenty more in life left to do.”
The key is to keep learning, keep moving, and take responsibility for how you respond. “Balance is everything, physical and mental. People in their 40s should already be thinking about who they want to be in their 60s and 70s.”
