As a child, Kershaw was always in the hospital; when she was four she suffered from meningitis and had to have two spinal taps. She also had a tumor on the knee, and several of broken bones from climbing trees. She "grew up with 42 nationalities" explaining in an interview, that her primary school of 150 children, was very multicultural. She later went on to win the Australian 2004 Girlfriend Model Search. After high school, in 2005, she moved from Melbourne to Sydney to begin modeling. She lived 100 meters from the beach and it was while at the beach where she got scouted by Chic Management's Kathy Ward, the model scout that also discovered Miranda Kerr and Samantha Harris. She signed with Chic Management within weeks.