The Flickr Bankofnsw Image Generatr

This building was originally located at Oakey, Queensland from 1913 to 1986 and was then relocated to Jondaryan Woolshed in 2008

Built in the days (1914) when Banks needed a physical presence in country towns.
Built to Georgian Revival style.

The face of this postcard can be seen at flic.kr/p/2qcsg5u

Handwritten text reads:

"Wear the Badge for St Patrick.
Wagga 16/3/10

Dear Dot, I hope you are keeping well. We got so far last night - dead beat I was, Tom was none the worse. Wagga is a lovely place. There is a splendid bridge over the Murrumbidgee River. We walked across it last night - after tea. The land hereabout is very dear. We will have to go further on. We shall be here tonight. I do not know yet where we go next. Harry McIntyre came out of Albury hospital yest., he had a bad accident, 5 ribs broken on the left side, his horses bolted. With best love from T&M."

Library catalogue barcode no. 0448255

Wagga Wagga City Library welcomes the use of images for study and research purposes, but asks that you please credit photographers where applicable and acknowledge source of images as being courtesy of ‘Wagga Wagga City Library’.

If you wish to reproduce this image for any other purpose, you can contact us via wcl@wagga.nsw.gov.au

If you have any further information on the image, please contact us or leave a comment in the box below.

The original version of this building, on the corner of Fitzmaurice and Johnston Sts, was built by Charles Hardy & Co in 1874, as a branch of the Bank of NSW. It has undergone renovations several times since. In 1982, the Bank of NSW merged with the Commercial Bank of Australia, and changed its name to Westpac (flic.kr/p/2qdJ7H1). The property was later home to Farrell Lush Solicitors.

The handwritten text on the reverse of this postcard can be seen at flic.kr/p/2qcqwSH

Library catalogue barcode no. 0448255

Wagga Wagga City Library welcomes the use of images for study and research purposes, but asks that you please credit photographers where applicable and acknowledge source of images as being courtesy of ‘Wagga Wagga City Library’.

If you wish to reproduce this image for any other purpose, you can contact us via wcl@wagga.nsw.gov.au

If you have any further information on the image, please contact us or leave a comment in the box below.

The original version of this building, on the corner of Fitzmaurice and Johnston Sts, was built by Charles Hardy & Co in 1874, as a branch of the Bank of NSW. It has undergone renovations several times since. In 1982, the Bank of NSW merged with the Commercial Bank of Australia, and changed its name to Westpac (flic.kr/p/2qdJ7H1). The property was later home to Farrell Lush Solicitors.

Library catalogue barcode no. 0476846

Wagga Wagga City Library welcomes the use of images for study and research purposes, but asks that you please credit photographers where applicable and acknowledge source of images as being courtesy of ‘Wagga Wagga City Library’.

If you wish to reproduce this image for any other purpose, you can contact us via wcl@wagga.nsw.gov.au

If you have any further information on the image, please contact us or leave a comment in the box below.

Built 1938 now a private residence

Oamaru.Oamaru at the estuary of the Waitaki River was a major Maori settlement area where over 1,000 middens have been searched. This was a major home of the Moa hunting Maoris of the 1300s and 1400s. Whalers visited the Otago coast here in the 1830s and the first white settlers came around 1850. The town of Oamaru was declared in 1859. Local quarries provided an extremely hard form of very white limestone for many of the buildings. The town grew as a service centre for the agricultural hinterland. Its boom period was in the 1870s and 1880s when its heritage buildings were erected. Since the port closed in 1970 the town has slumped industrially but has reinvented itself as a heritage city. It contains over 70 buildings on the NZ heritage list. Some of the historic buildings, many built of white Oamaru stone along Thames Street include the Waitaki Council Chambers, the former Municipal Chambers now the Opera House 1907, the Court House 1883, the Boer War Memorial, the Queens Hotel 1884, the Mechanics Institute 1882, the Post Office 1884, the National Bank 1870 etc. There are many more buildings in nearby Tyne Street and Harbour Street. This is adjacent to the port and the railway. Oamaru was a major exporter of frozen meat and this area blossomed with beautiful classical style warehouses in the late 1870s and the early 1880s. The warehouses stored grain and wheat and wool. Many of the buildings were designed by the well-respected local architectural partnership of Forrester and Lemon. This was the heyday of growth and importance of Oamaru. After the demise of the international port in the 1970s (in favour of Christchurch and Dunedin) the warehouses closed and the area became run down. Most of the area was taken over by the Oamaru Harbour Civic Trust in the late 1980s. The wonderful old buildings have been restored where necessary and they have been leased out to art galleries, bookshops, antiques stores, fashion houses, cafes and bed and breakfast establishments. Oamaru heritage precinct has become a major tourist draw card for the city and it is a wonderful example of what can be done with historic centres of cities to revitalise them rather than demolish them. New Zealand knows how to sensibly preserve the past.

Branxton. Population 2,000.
The private township here on the Hunter River was named Black Creek which was soon changed to Branxton in 1848.The town eventually grew as the gateway to the Upper Hunter and the Liverpool Plains. But its main claim to fame is as the birthplace of the Australian wine industry. Early wine maker James Busby planted is first vines on his property named Kirkton which was based on a 2,000 acre free land grant. He had published a treatise on French wine making in 1825.In 1830 he published a book on growing vines in the Hunter Valley. After touring France and Spain again in 1830 he planted his first vineyard in 1832. He was soon regarded as the “father of Australian and New Zealand viticulture”. Also in 1832 he was appointed as the Resident (Magistrate) of New Zealand to control relations between the Maori and whites and he eventually wrote a treaty of cessation for the Maori Chiefs to sign. Captain William Hobson was appointed to annex New Zealand. Busby wrote a draft of the Treaty of Waitangi which Hobson accepted and it was soon endorsed by the Maori Chiefs in Busby’s house at Waitangi. Busy bought land at Waitangi and farmed there. He died on a visit to England in 1871. The town of Branxton is on the main railway to Armidale and its railway station is heritage listed. Some of the heritage buildings in this pretty town starting in Cessnock Road are the 1879 built Anglican Church which was consecrated in 1881. Architect was John Horbury Hunt who designed many Anglian churches and the Newcastle Anglican Cathedral. Opposite the church is the old Courthouse, now used as the police station. It was built in 1880 with a classical façade and designed by government architect James Barnet. Around the corner to the right in Drinan Street is the neo-Georgian style Post Office built in 1926 and the Methodist Church opened in 1918. Part of it dates from 1865. Down on the Main highway on the corner is Victoria House. An elegant building erected in 1892 as a store and residence. Across the highway from it is the former Bank of New South Wales built in 1939 in the style of an American colonial residence. It has dormer windows, gables, window shutters and a number of Georgian style features. It is no longer a bank and a rare example of a bank building in this style! On the adjacent corner is a fine Edwardian/Federation style residence built 1910 to 1920. Beside it is a Bills Horse Trough. After George Bills, a horse lover died in 1927, his estate funded many horse troughs throughout Victoria and NSW in the 1930s. Along the main highway is the Royal Federal Hotel built in 1927.

Dunedoo is a tiny rural service centre on the crossroads of the Golden and Castlereagh Highways. It is surrounded by fertile plains, gently rolling hills and wide valleys. The local water comes from the Talbragar River. The surrounding district is agricultural and concentrates on wheat, cattle, mixed farming, timber, fat lambs and wool. The commercial centre is shops along Bolaro Street, parallel to the railway line.

Dunedoo Museum located in the Old Bank of New South Wales building, Bolaro Street.
On 2 May 1910 the Manager of the Gulgong Branch of the Bank of NSW arrived at Dunedoo and opened a branch in a room at the end of the front verandah of the Royal Hotel.
The Manager of the Australian Bank of Commerce arrived and opened a branch at the other end of the veranda, so Dunedoo had two banks and a hotel all under one roof.

In 1910 the Bank of NSW moved from the hotel to other premises, before shifting into the present bank building which was erected in 1914–1915 at a cost of £2,876. The architect being Alfred Allen, and the contractor A Smith.
Renovations occurred in 1938 and alterations in 1955–56.

The building became a branch of Westpac in 1982 when the Bank of NSW merged with the Commercial Bank of Australia.
Banking operations closed in 2016.

The building is now owned by Council and served as a community centre and accommodates the Dunedoo branch of the Macquarie Regional Library, Dunedoo & District Development Officer, Community meeting rooms, local Radio Station 96.1FM and the Dunedoo Museum.

Dunedoo is a tiny rural service centre on the crossroads of the Golden and Castlereagh Highways. It is surrounded by fertile plains, gently rolling hills and wide valleys. The local water comes from the Talbragar River. The surrounding district is agricultural and concentrates on wheat, cattle, mixed farming, timber, fat lambs and wool. The commercial centre is shops along Bolaro Street, parallel to the railway line.

Brisbane city

Old Bank of New South Wales (Westpac) New England Highway, Tenterfield, NSW. No longer used as a bank.

Nimbin. Population 450.
Nimbin was a special place for the Bundjalung Aboriginal people as it was believed to be the home of sacred mystical small men who were the spiritual custodians of the mountains. The word meant “home to the little man”. When white pastoralists came the district became part of the Lismore station held by William Wilson – hence the naming
of the Wilson River. He held the lease until 1880 when the government sent surveyors in to survey virgin rainforest. The first white family arrived in 1882 followed by many more in 1883. Their first task was to clear land for a few pigs, cattle and vegetables. The Red Cedar and Hoop Pine were felled and then rolled into the Wilson River and floated down to the saw mills in Lismore. It was a tough life in this district. In 1903 one local block holder H Thornburn subdivided part of his property to create the village of Nimbin. Thornburn donated one block for a School of Arts (built 1904) and another for a Presbyterian Church. The first official school opened in 1906. The town grew quickly with a hotel, bakery, butchery, café, store, bank agency, Post Office and saw mill starting up within the first couple of years. The big boost to the town was the opening of a butter factory in 1908. Then the public buildings followed with Anglican and Presbyterian churches in 1909. A Methodist church followed in 1913 and a Catholic Church and school in 1918. A new Post Officer was built in 1914. The bank of N.S.W opened their first wooden bank in 1909 but this burnt down. The bank built a distinctive Art Deco wooden bank in 1919 and an E. S & A bank opened in 1922. The Freemason’s Hotel was erected in 1926 (it is now the Nimbin Hotel) and a wooden Masonic Lodge was erected in 1937. A Police Station was not built until 1934 but a police officer was stationed in the town from 1917. The main stays of the town economy were saw milling and butter production but apart from cattle, local farmers grew bananas, peas, beans and passionfruit. The Nimbin Dairy Cooperative amalgamated with Norco dairy in 1921. The factory closed in 1961 as cream could be fast trucked to Lismore.

The fortunes and direction of the town changed in 1973 when the Aquarius Foundation of the Australian Union of Students from Sydney University got permission to hold a bi-annual arts festival in Nimbin. The Aquarians opposed the War in Vietnam and wanted a freer and more humane world with peace, love and happiness. A Rainbow Café opened on the work site being prepared for the influx of a possible 5,000 university students. Volunteers did the work and artists came to prepare. The festival in May was successful and about 100 people stayed on to run the Rainbow Café, do their art and prepare for another festival. Several groups emerged to buy properties for cooperatives and the attraction of rural living and rainforest living blossomed amongst former city people. The hippy new comers built makeshift houses, prepared home crafts, and cared about environmental responsibility, communal living and loving, and in some cases, mind altering drugs. But life was not altogether free and each commune had its own rules which had to be obeyed as well as local and state laws. When the Lismore Council ordered illegal houses to be demolished the Nimbinites formed the district Homebuilders Association to fight the Council. In the end the Homebuilders won the right for multiple residences on one property. Then in 1979 a bigger opponent emerged – logging in the rainforests at Terania Creek. Conservation made national headlines, action groups were formed and the NSW government created new national parks like nearby Nightcap and reduced forest logging. Economically the new cooperatives promoted growth of Nimbin too. The Bush Co-Op began as a community organisation but it soon had food storage and wholesale distribution arms, mechanical, metal and woodworking shops, a media group and graphic art studios, theatre troupe and general design. At the same time independent artists, writers and musicians lived and worked in the town. Commercialism crept back into the new hippy world with markets, galleries and more festivals. But the overarching principles of living and caring for others and protecting the environment and living sustainably continued. Diversity was the key and new spiritual groups found a home at Nimbin too from Thai Buddhist groups to Indian Hindu philosophical ashrams to “born again” Christian groups. Not surprisingly Nimbin has an annual Mardi Grass and a world naked Bike Ride celebration amongst its annual festivals!
Just outside of Nimbin turn right into Stony Chute Road to see some granite boulders which are sacred place to the Bundjalung people and heritage listed. The lowest rock is called the cathedral, whilst the top level of rock is called the castle. The highest peak is named Lady Cunningham’s Needle. These granite dykes are evidence of old volcanic activity the basis of the rich fertile soils of the district.

Notes: Lawson agency occupying the 'MacBrair Buildings 1923' with the Blue Bird Café & Milk Bar, R W Arnold Chemist, .

Format: silver gelatin negative, 4" x 5" (10.2 cm x 12.7 cm) Kodak Royal Pan

Date Range: 1950s

Location:

Licensing: Attribution, share alike, creative commons

Repository: Blue Mountains Library - library.bmcc.nsw.gov.au

Part of Local Studies Collection: SS 11-06

Provenance: Souvenir Snapshots

Links:

215 Church St, Parramatta, NSW.

56 Regent St, Redfern, NSW.