City of Bayswater: History
In the 1890s, Bayswater was a small settlement, awkwardly straddling the boundaries of the Perth and Swan Road Districts. In December 1894, residents held a meeting to petition for a road board. The government rejected the petition. A second attempt to get Bayswater's own road board in 1896 was successful. Both the Perth and Swan Road Boards were happy to relinquish responsibility for building roads there. The Bayswater Road Board was gazetted on 5 March 1897, becoming one of several new local government areas established in the 1890s along the railway. A wooden ratepayers' hall was constructed on Guildford Road.
In 1944, at the annual ratepayers' meeting, a majority of the seven ratepayers that attended voted for the board to change the district's name to "Oakleigh Park Road District". The name Bayswater was considered to obstruct progress due to its working-class connotations. After advertising for objections to the change in name, many came in and the idea was ditched. On 1 July 1961, it became a shire following the enactment of the Local Government Act 1960.
In October 1978, the shire council was sacked by the Government of Western Australia for mismanagement, corruption and various actions breaking the Local Government Act. The shire sold council property and several large contracts without tenders. A commissioner was placed in charge of the council for five months. At the next council election on 24 February 1979, 80% of ratepayers voted, much higher than the usual 30%. Only two of the councillors elected had been councillors before.
On 29 October 1983, it attained city status. Around this same time, it relocated its administration from Bayswater to its present location on Broun Avenue in Morley. In 1998 the suburb of Maylands was transferred into the City of Bayswater from the City of Stirling.
The portion of the suburb of Noranda north of Widgee Road was transferred to the City of Bayswater from the City of Swan on 1 July 2016.