Bank of New South Wales is a heritage-listed former bank building at 34–36 Gill Street, Charters Towers City, Charters Towers, Charters Towers Region, Queensland, Australia. It was designed by Eyre & Munro and built in 1889 by Kelleher. It is also known as Wherry House. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 9 November 2012.
History The former Bank of New South Wales building was built in Gill Street, Charters Towers in 1889, replacing a number of earlier timber bank buildings on other sites in both Charters Towers and nearby Millchester. This two-storey masonry building addressing Gill Street also has a number of additions to the rear which demonstrate the evolution of the banking industry in the town over time. It complements other significant bank buildings in nearby Mosman Street, including the former Australian Bank of Commerce, now The World Theatre, and the former Queensland National Bank building which later served as the City Hall.
Charters Towers' gold was first discovered in December 1871, by an Aboriginal boy named Jupiter who tended the horses for prospectors Hugh Mosman, George Clarke and John Fraser. A storm frightened the horses into a gap in the hills, and while retrieving them, Jupiter found a rich vein of gold laden quartz. Mosman travelled to Ravenswood in early January 1872 to register the claim which he named Charters Towers, honouring the Gold Commissioner for the Broughton gold fields. By March 1872, Commissioner Charters had issued 25 prospecting area permits in the vicinity of Mosman's claim, and the rush began.
The earliest settlement grew around diggings at the confluence of Buchanan's Gully and Gladstone Creek and was known as Millchester. About north-west of Millchester, another settlement evolved which became Charters Towers. It included a number of stores, hotels and a butcher shop along a track that was to become Mosman Street. The population of Charters Towers was reputedly 3000 by August 1872. There was rivalry between the two settlements, particularly after the courthouse was erected at Millchester in 1873.
In the meantime, it had become evident that the procurement of gold from the deep seams of Charter Towers required substantial machinery to crush quartz and sink shafts. This required working capital to finance machinery and to pay the wages of workers employed on these time-consuming processes. The Queensland Gold Fields Act 1874 and Gold Mining Companies Act 1875 allowed for combinations of leases, claims and syndicates in order to work their leases at great depths. The legislation also underpinned the establishment of permanent settlement which would attract capital investment to the field. The influx of money and the resultant yield of gold were reflected in the growth of the township and the establishment of banks, mining companies and mining agencies and exchanges. Two banking companies, the Australian Joint Stock Bank and the Bank of New South Wales established offices on the goldfields by July 1872, only six months after the registration of the first claims.
The Bank of New South Wales was the first bank established in Australia (February 1817) but it was restricted to trading in Sydney until 1850. After restructuring, it opened its first branch outside Sydney, in Brisbane, on 14 November 1850, also being the first bank established in Queensland. It continued to expand rapidly with the rush of gold discoveries in New South Wales and Victoria. The bank set up agencies and gold-buying agents at every new mining venture in order to spread its network and consolidate its position. Bank officers were urged on by their superiors to be the first to a new location to set up a gold-buying agency. By 1861 the Bank of NSW had grown from a single Sydney office to a network of 37 branches in Australia and New Zealand.
The expansion of the Bank of NSW into North Queensland was driven by Robert Towns, one of its directors. Bank establishment followed both pastoral development and mineral discoveries. Port Denison, established to serve pastoralists, became the municipality of Bowen in 1863. By 1864 there was Bowen branch of the Bank of NSW, followed by one in Townsville in March 1866, where Towns and his partner John Melton Black had established a boiling down works. Another branch opened on the Ravenswood goldfields in 1870, one at Cardwell, (the terminus for the gold escort) in 1871 and in Charters Towers and Georgetown in 1872. The Cooktown branch, servicing the Palmer River fields opened in 1876, then Thornborough in 1877 on the Hodgkinson goldfields, followed by Cairns and Port Douglas. The Charters Towers Bank of NSW had opened only two days after the Australian Joint Stock Bank, which had opened on 2 July 1872. Then in October 1872, both banks relocated to nearby Millchester.
In Millchester, land on the northern corner of Jardine and Macdonald Streets was formally transferred to the Bank of NSW in April 1875, but the actual sale is likely to have occurred prior to the title documentation. The Joint Stock Bank owned land opposite in Macdonald Street, and the Queensland National Bank opened in 1873 adjacent. Then in July 1874, a cottage was reported to have been relocated to Mosman Street, Charters Towers, to be used as an agency of the Bank of NSW. Presumably the main branch remained in Millchester. At the time Charters Towers was described as: "solidifying rapidly and is giving undeniable proof that it means to stand. New shops and stores are going up. Buildings are being renovated and painted..."
Charters Towers soon dominated. A town survey was undertaken in November 1874, and marked out allotments in a "T" formation, with the mines and provision stores of Mosman Street on one axis, and the road to Millchester marked by Gill Street on the other. In January 1876, the Bank of NSW was relocated to Charters Towers, with Millchester becoming the agency office. This relocation was touted by the Northern Miner newspaper, as "the beginning of the end" for Millchester. Charters Towers was declared a municipality in 1877 encompassing centred on Mosman Street. It included new churches, the Oddfellows and Good Templar Lodges, and 21 hotels and 57 shops. The Bank of NSW moved into new premises in March 1877, described as a five roomed banking house, bringing solidarity to the top end of Mosman Street.
The wealth of the Charters Towers goldfields grew in the following years, particularly following the 1886 Colonial and Indian Exhibition in London where specimens of Charters Towers Gold were featured. Almost immediately English investors seized the opportunity to be part of the Charters Towers gold riches. Mining companies were formed, managed by Charters Towers' mining agents and share-brokers, and while some shares were held by English interests, many local people prospered through their investments, which then led to an expansion of banking facilities and mining exchanges. Banks and gold buyers purchased the gold, minted it into sovereigns in Australia and England, which were held in the vaults of banks in Melbourne, London, Berlin, and New York and then shipped to pay international debt. According to the Northern Miner newspaper, there were five banks in Gill Street in mid 1887: the Bank of NSW, Bank of Australasia, London Chartered Bank, Union and Royal Banks. The Queensland National Bank and the Australian Joint Stock Bank remained in Mosman Street.
The Bank of NSW gradually improved banking facilities during the 1880s when many new branches opened in Queensland. Most directors were keen for bank premises in country towns to emphasise dignity, size and solidity in the design of their buildings demonstrating the bank's capacity to survive and consolidate. Consequently, well known architects were employed to design bank buildings in New South Wales, and throughout Australia and New Zealand.
This was the case in Charters Towers. The Bank of NSW purchased an allotment in February 1887, diagonally opposite the post office in Gill Street, on which to erect a new substantial brick building. Architects Eyre and Munro called for tenders in the local newspaper in April 1888. The firm had offices in Townsville and Charters Towers. The Charters Towers office was run by William Henry Allan Munro, who had been previously employed in Townsville by architects and builders Rooney Brothers. After winning a competition for the design of the Queensland Hotel, he was taken into partnership with Walter Morris Eyre. In 1887 he became the junior partner, managing the Charters Towers office. Eyre, brother-in-law of architect FDG Stanley, had managed Stanley's Maryborough office between 1882 and 1885 before relocating to Townsville, where he supervised the construction of the Bank of NSW building in Flinders Street. The Eyre and Munro partnership designed many north Queensland buildings including the 1889 Holy Trinity Church of England in Herberton, the 1890 Bank of North Queensland in Cooktown, the 1890–1 Townsville School of Arts, and the 1892 Burns Philp Building, later part of Bartlam's Store in Charters Towers (now Zara Clark Museum). They also designed the building on the corner of Deane and Gill Streets for auctioneers Ackers, Wilson, Ayton and Ryan, built in 1888 which later housed the Royal Bank of Queensland.