presented by Dieter Glenk
Dieter presented the following as part of the Official Launch of Memories in my Luggage at the Tabulam and Templer Home for the Aged in Bayswater. (Dieter is picture on the right, with his brother Helmut on the left and Sabine Nielsen centre.)
My brother Helmut has spoken of and documented why and how the first Templers settled in Bayswater in November/December 1946. I would like to relate some of my memories and experiences as and eight year old boy who had grown up behind barb wire and for whom the new freedom was a massive culture shock.
Our grandparents came with us. They had received some small income from their orange grove harvest in the early years of internment but this had stopped. It was insufficient to sustain them into old age.
It had been a condition of release from the internment camp that people could support themselves and that they had accommodation. In the case of our grandparents because of their age, there was an additional condition that for them to remain in Australia they would be fully supported by our parents for the rest of their lives and they would never be entitled to government social security payments or the pension. At the time of our release Opa and Oma were aged 61 and 63. It was their third start from scratch in their lives which had been devastated by two world wars.
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Dieter presented the following as part of the Official Launch of Memories in my Luggage at the Tabulam and Templer Home for the Aged in Bayswater. (Dieter is picture on the right, with his brother Helmut on the left and Sabine Nielsen centre.)
My brother Helmut has spoken of and documented why and how the first Templers settled in Bayswater in November/December 1946. I would like to relate some of my memories and experiences as and eight year old boy who had grown up behind barb wire and for whom the new freedom was a massive culture shock.
Our grandparents came with us. They had received some small income from their orange grove harvest in the early years of internment but this had stopped. It was insufficient to sustain them into old age.
It had been a condition of release from the internment camp that people could support themselves and that they had accommodation. In the case of our grandparents because of their age, there was an additional condition that for them to remain in Australia they would be fully supported by our parents for the rest of their lives and they would never be entitled to government social security payments or the pension. At the time of our release Opa and Oma were aged 61 and 63. It was their third start from scratch in their lives which had been devastated by two world wars.
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It was in the late afternoon of the 19th November1946 that our family together with our grandparents arrived at Bayswater station accompanied by Mr. Rudolf Auer who had been our neighbor in Camp and who had arranged work for the men .
We had two rooms in an old house at the end of what today is Marlborough Rd .north of Mountain Highway not far from the Sunbeam Poultry Farm.It was very rural with open paddocks, orchards and bushland along the Dandenong Creek.
That day was a beautiful sunny spring day and Station St. seemed to be like a town out of the American west, there were shops with verandahs, hitching rails and a water trough for horses and even a blacksmith shop where Mr. Edney Kleinert shooed horses. All fascinating sights for me as an 8 year old.
Things that made a big impression on me was the song of the birds at dawn in the springtime blossom of the cherry plum trees and the smelly white billy goat on a chain that was used to keep the large blackberry patches under control.
Opa and Dad started to work immediately at Mr. Lapins poultry farm so that the rent could be paid and food bought.
We slept on the floor on mattresses filled with straw there was no power, only kerosene lamps and a woodfired stove for cooking. Opa started a vegie patch, it soon supplied the kitchen.
Our parents had nothing as they had no assets in Palestine and like all the other internees had been locked up for seven years unable to earn any income or further their careers. This made them feel vulnerable and very cautious. Two years later borrowing from the bank on a labourer’s wage to built a house was a difficult decision for our father.
In 1946, Bayswater was a quiet rural village with apple, pear and cherry orchards and market gardening activities. The local state school from preps to grade 8 had less than 100 pupils and everybody knew each other. There were a number of long-term Bayswater families who were descendants of Lutheran protestants who had settled in the district in the late 1800’s. Before the first WW Bayswater was known as Germantown. There were names such as Kleinert ,Schmolling.,Peck, Pegler, Lehmann ,Schulz and Fiedler, their children were our schoolfriends.
When we arrived it was only a month before the summer school holidays so Peter Auer and I started at Bayswater Primary school at the start of the school yeari n February 1947. I was eight years old, could read and write German and had basic arithmetic after 2 years German schooling in the camp at Tatura but I couldn’t speak a word of English.
I was allocated a place in the prep class with Miss Canty until I had sufficient English to join my peers in grade 3 several months later. Peter and I must have been like the kids from another planet, I wore my Lederhosen and this lead to much taunting and fun being made of me. I was called a Nazi and was ridiculed. In tears I told my parents I’d never wear Lederhosen to school again.
Things got better as we learnt English and could answer back, also we were joined by other Templer children, the Franks, Sawatzky’s ,Dyck’s and my cousin Gisela Wied. We soon became part of the school and wider community and assimilated quickly taking part in the local football and tennjs clubs.
By the winter of1947 after less than one year in rent at Bayswater, we were given notice to leave. Accommodation was very scarce, there had been no house building during the war years, soldiers were being “demobbed” and coming home, all putting strain on accommodation. Our mother had found part time work as a domestic help and housekeeper for a Matthews family in Hawthorn. Mum spoke fluent English having been a nanny to several English families in Palestine and with them had been in England in 1936/37.
This was a great benefit and Mrs. Matthew hearing of our plight offered us accommodation in her country house on a five acre bush block in Rankin Rd, Boronia. Rankin Rd. was a dirt bush track and there. was no power. We were told to move in quickly to prevent squatters occupying the house. Mum and Dad slept in the house for several nights until we could move our few belongings and live there.
The men bought bicycles so that they could ride to work each day a distance of 6Km each way or 60 Km per week. No money for cars or petrol then.
Once in Boronia it was decided that I should continue to go to school in Bayswater as we intended to return and settle there. During 1948 four building blocks became available in Myrtle St and my father ,opa, uncle Karl Wied and dad’s cousin Hermann Kübler bought a block each for100 pounds per quarter acre block. Again the site was a dirt track no power no phone no drainage but had mains water and was close to work, school and station.
I walked to the station at Boronia and then from Bayswater station to school each day. On Saturdays I attended private German lessons with Miss Emma Wagner at her home in High St. Bayswater opposite to where ALDI is today. .The Loebert brothers Gerhard and Manfred were my fellow students and Miss Wagner was an excellent teacher. We received tuition in German grammar, literature, history and geography. My uncle Alfred Schurr mother’s youngest brother who was a teacher in Germany sent us text books and years later when I met him did we realize what we’d achieved with those German lessons.
Our house was built in1949. Building materials especially bricks and tiles were hard to get and in short supply. Dad hired a horse drawn sled to transport bricks and tiles from where they had been offloaded in Elm St, due to the muddy conditions, to the building site. There was fear that the materials would be stolen.
We moved in in October 1949at the time my mother celebrated her 40th birthday. What a sense of joy and achievement it must have been to finally be in your own home. Oma and Opa moved in with us until their own was built next door a year later.
Another, and probably the most important connection of the Glenk family Templer links to Bayswater and why the Templers are here today, involved the purchase by the Temple Society of the land on which the TTHA, Templer Hall and Chapel now stand. During their bike rides to work in 1948 my father and grandfather became aware of a large block of land for sale on the corner of Scoresby and Boronia roads and bounded by Victoria Rd. and Sasses Ave. It was a run down sheep farm with a farmhouse stockyards and open paddocks.
Dad and Opa thought it would be ideal for the Temple Society to set up a community center and to subdivide building blocks for Templers to buy. They brought it to the attention of the Regional Council who agreed and decided to purchase the land, approx. 120 acres. The vendors agent was pleased with the sale to a reputable buyer and offered my father a commission for introducing the purchaser. It was worth several month of my fathers wage at that time. The Temple Society forbade him from accepting this payment, saying it was not the “Templer way”. My father complied although he was very disappointed. The money would have been welcome and very helpful at the time.
So much for Templer standards, and obedience as practiced by our forebears.
Bayswater changed rapidly in the 1950’s as industry set up along the railway line and Mountain Highway with companies such as Dunlop Rubber and British Nylon Spinners providing employment for hundreds.
Orchards and market gardens were subdivided and we Templers sold of large pieces of our land along Boronia Rd. and Sasses Ave.to fund other projects. We built our hall in the early 1960’s together with the Kegelbahn, a real community effort. All Templer men and boys from the Bayswater/Boronia area were rostered to work on the building.
The original Templer Home was established in the early 1970’s and today we have this fine TTHA complex and the Chapel in which I was pleased and proud to have been involved as Building Committee Chairman.
All together a brief summary of our families and the Temple Societies links to Bayswater.
We had two rooms in an old house at the end of what today is Marlborough Rd .north of Mountain Highway not far from the Sunbeam Poultry Farm.It was very rural with open paddocks, orchards and bushland along the Dandenong Creek.
That day was a beautiful sunny spring day and Station St. seemed to be like a town out of the American west, there were shops with verandahs, hitching rails and a water trough for horses and even a blacksmith shop where Mr. Edney Kleinert shooed horses. All fascinating sights for me as an 8 year old.
Things that made a big impression on me was the song of the birds at dawn in the springtime blossom of the cherry plum trees and the smelly white billy goat on a chain that was used to keep the large blackberry patches under control.
Opa and Dad started to work immediately at Mr. Lapins poultry farm so that the rent could be paid and food bought.
We slept on the floor on mattresses filled with straw there was no power, only kerosene lamps and a woodfired stove for cooking. Opa started a vegie patch, it soon supplied the kitchen.
Our parents had nothing as they had no assets in Palestine and like all the other internees had been locked up for seven years unable to earn any income or further their careers. This made them feel vulnerable and very cautious. Two years later borrowing from the bank on a labourer’s wage to built a house was a difficult decision for our father.
In 1946, Bayswater was a quiet rural village with apple, pear and cherry orchards and market gardening activities. The local state school from preps to grade 8 had less than 100 pupils and everybody knew each other. There were a number of long-term Bayswater families who were descendants of Lutheran protestants who had settled in the district in the late 1800’s. Before the first WW Bayswater was known as Germantown. There were names such as Kleinert ,Schmolling.,Peck, Pegler, Lehmann ,Schulz and Fiedler, their children were our schoolfriends.
When we arrived it was only a month before the summer school holidays so Peter Auer and I started at Bayswater Primary school at the start of the school yeari n February 1947. I was eight years old, could read and write German and had basic arithmetic after 2 years German schooling in the camp at Tatura but I couldn’t speak a word of English.
I was allocated a place in the prep class with Miss Canty until I had sufficient English to join my peers in grade 3 several months later. Peter and I must have been like the kids from another planet, I wore my Lederhosen and this lead to much taunting and fun being made of me. I was called a Nazi and was ridiculed. In tears I told my parents I’d never wear Lederhosen to school again.
Things got better as we learnt English and could answer back, also we were joined by other Templer children, the Franks, Sawatzky’s ,Dyck’s and my cousin Gisela Wied. We soon became part of the school and wider community and assimilated quickly taking part in the local football and tennjs clubs.
By the winter of1947 after less than one year in rent at Bayswater, we were given notice to leave. Accommodation was very scarce, there had been no house building during the war years, soldiers were being “demobbed” and coming home, all putting strain on accommodation. Our mother had found part time work as a domestic help and housekeeper for a Matthews family in Hawthorn. Mum spoke fluent English having been a nanny to several English families in Palestine and with them had been in England in 1936/37.
This was a great benefit and Mrs. Matthew hearing of our plight offered us accommodation in her country house on a five acre bush block in Rankin Rd, Boronia. Rankin Rd. was a dirt bush track and there. was no power. We were told to move in quickly to prevent squatters occupying the house. Mum and Dad slept in the house for several nights until we could move our few belongings and live there.
The men bought bicycles so that they could ride to work each day a distance of 6Km each way or 60 Km per week. No money for cars or petrol then.
Once in Boronia it was decided that I should continue to go to school in Bayswater as we intended to return and settle there. During 1948 four building blocks became available in Myrtle St and my father ,opa, uncle Karl Wied and dad’s cousin Hermann Kübler bought a block each for100 pounds per quarter acre block. Again the site was a dirt track no power no phone no drainage but had mains water and was close to work, school and station.
I walked to the station at Boronia and then from Bayswater station to school each day. On Saturdays I attended private German lessons with Miss Emma Wagner at her home in High St. Bayswater opposite to where ALDI is today. .The Loebert brothers Gerhard and Manfred were my fellow students and Miss Wagner was an excellent teacher. We received tuition in German grammar, literature, history and geography. My uncle Alfred Schurr mother’s youngest brother who was a teacher in Germany sent us text books and years later when I met him did we realize what we’d achieved with those German lessons.
Our house was built in1949. Building materials especially bricks and tiles were hard to get and in short supply. Dad hired a horse drawn sled to transport bricks and tiles from where they had been offloaded in Elm St, due to the muddy conditions, to the building site. There was fear that the materials would be stolen.
We moved in in October 1949at the time my mother celebrated her 40th birthday. What a sense of joy and achievement it must have been to finally be in your own home. Oma and Opa moved in with us until their own was built next door a year later.
Another, and probably the most important connection of the Glenk family Templer links to Bayswater and why the Templers are here today, involved the purchase by the Temple Society of the land on which the TTHA, Templer Hall and Chapel now stand. During their bike rides to work in 1948 my father and grandfather became aware of a large block of land for sale on the corner of Scoresby and Boronia roads and bounded by Victoria Rd. and Sasses Ave. It was a run down sheep farm with a farmhouse stockyards and open paddocks.
Dad and Opa thought it would be ideal for the Temple Society to set up a community center and to subdivide building blocks for Templers to buy. They brought it to the attention of the Regional Council who agreed and decided to purchase the land, approx. 120 acres. The vendors agent was pleased with the sale to a reputable buyer and offered my father a commission for introducing the purchaser. It was worth several month of my fathers wage at that time. The Temple Society forbade him from accepting this payment, saying it was not the “Templer way”. My father complied although he was very disappointed. The money would have been welcome and very helpful at the time.
So much for Templer standards, and obedience as practiced by our forebears.
Bayswater changed rapidly in the 1950’s as industry set up along the railway line and Mountain Highway with companies such as Dunlop Rubber and British Nylon Spinners providing employment for hundreds.
Orchards and market gardens were subdivided and we Templers sold of large pieces of our land along Boronia Rd. and Sasses Ave.to fund other projects. We built our hall in the early 1960’s together with the Kegelbahn, a real community effort. All Templer men and boys from the Bayswater/Boronia area were rostered to work on the building.
The original Templer Home was established in the early 1970’s and today we have this fine TTHA complex and the Chapel in which I was pleased and proud to have been involved as Building Committee Chairman.
All together a brief summary of our families and the Temple Societies links to Bayswater.
