Former Bavarian Bakehouse owners Slava and Georgina are selling the family home of 41 years

Slava Jezek remembers when Canberra was a ‘single set of traffic lights’ town.

“There was only one set of lights when I arrived here in the late 1960s,” Slava recalls.

“They were on Northbourne Avenue. Canberra was very much a bush town.”

The brand new suburb of Mawson was welcome relief for Slava, his mother, grandmother and two siblings, who arrived in Canberra as refugees from the Czech Republic in March 1969. A Soviet Union-led pact had invaded their country and was enforcing mandatory conscription. Having Slava forced into the Army was terrifying for the Jezeks, so they fled.

At the same time, another family from the Czech Republic, the Jelinkovas, had also left the country, bound for O’Connor, Canberra. The daughter of the family, Georgina, joined her parents in the inner north in September 1969 from London, where she’d been working as a Nanny.

“I got off the plane and the taxi driver headed toward O’Connor, where my parents were living,” Georgina recalls.

“I ended up saying to the taxi driver, ‘When will we actually arrive in Canberra?’

“He said, ‘What do you mean? This is it.’

“I’d just been in London – one of the biggest capitals in the world – and here I was in Australia, in the capital, and it was just bushland.”

In a coincidence that would change the lives of both families, the Jezeks and Jelinkovas – who ”knew of each other” — ran into each other in front of Monaro Mall (now the Canberra Centre) in front of David Jones in early 1970. Slava had never seen Georgina before but right there and then he invited her to Batemans Bay for the weekend.

“She said yes,” Slava says.

“The rest, as they say, is history.”

Over the next 54 years the Jezeks built a life they loved in Canberra. As newlyweds they lived in Holt, had two children, Monica and Mark, and then moved southside to Pearce in 1982 to be closer to a new business they’d started at Chifley shops.

That business was the Bavarian Bakehouse, and if you grew up in Canberra in the 1980s and 1990s, you’ll know it was a Canberra institution. Saturday mornings saw lines around the block for the bakehouse’s pastries (which Slava taught himself to make) and the bakery’s award-winning caraway seed rye bread.

“People came from all over to buy the rye bread – from Sydney, even from Melbourne,” Slava recalls.

“People would call and say, can I order 50 loaves of bread? And take them home to Sydney and freeze them.

“Then I started making different types of cakes, my own recipes so that no-one could copy.

“Danish pastries, poppy seed strudels, walnut strudels, poppy seed croissants, cheese and bacon, custard with almonds. We were just enjoying feeding the people of Canberra.”

The Jezeks sold the Bavarian Bakehouse in 2008 and spent time turning the family home into their dream home, with the addition of an extension, a pool, brand new kitchen and bathrooms, and to Georgina’s delight, in-slab heating.

But now they want to be closer to their grandchildren and have purchased a block at South Jerrabomberra. Their McLaren Crescent, Pearce, home will be auctioned on 11 November.

“This has been a wonderful home, so close to the shops, our business, and all the work on the home has kept us busy over the years,” Slava says.

“We hope another family can love this home like we have.”

Number 4 McLaren Crescent, Pearce, goes to auction at 1.30pm on Saturday 11 November 2023.

View the full listing.