Our History

It is easy to see why Bayswater South Primary School teaches German when you consider the suburb of Bayswater’s long and proud history of German heritage through the German immigrants who settled in the area.

In the area’s early history, the township was called Macauley, but it was also nicknamed Germantown, due to the large number of German immigrants settling in the area. When the railway arrived in 1889, the township became Bayswater.

 In the 1920s, the land around the township of Bayswater mainly comprised of farmland belonging to five families, originally from Germany. It is an interesting fact to consider that most of our suburb today has been built on land that was originally German farmland.

In the late 1940s, more German families settled in the area, as they were able to find work in the area and knew one another. Many families connected through the Templer Society settled in a small area of Bayswater. It was thought that up to half of the Bayswater community, at this time, was either from a German or Dutch speaking background. Several of the German families came from an agricultural background and therefore kept wonderful vegetable, flower and fruit tree gardens and theses gardens were often the envy of the wider community.

Today, Bayswater is a multicultural community with a population from many places, cultures, and heritages. And while it might be harder to see the German heritage in the suburb, The Templer Society continues to provide a wide range of support to the local community through its Community Centre and TTHA (Tabulam and Templer Home for the Aged), including a retirement village, nursing home and age care, while Siemens, a large German multi-national company, also has its Australian national headquarters in Bayswater.

Bayswater South Primary School is proud of our forty-plus year history of teaching using the German language and its contribution towards continuing the proud German heritage of the suburb of Bayswater.