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.