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The National Australia Bank is a heritage-listed bank building at 61 Churchill Street, Childers, Bundaberg Region, Queensland, Australia. It was designed by Hubert George Octavius Thomas and built . It is also known as Bank of Northern Queensland, Bank of Queensland, and National Bank of Australasia. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 21 October 1992. == History == This single-storeyed timber building, which initially comprised banking chambers at the front of the building and a manager's residence at the rear, was erected as the Childers branch of the Bank of North Queensland, established in Townsville in 1888. The Bank of North Queensland was the only bank ever directed from northern Queensland, and was the first to capitalise on the need for banking facilities in the newly emerging sugar town of Childers.〔 Following logging of the dense Isis Scrub in the 1870s, Childers, in the heart of the scrub, was promoted in the 1880s by Maryborough interests, as an agricultural district. The land in the immediate vicinity of the present town of Childers was surveyed in 1882 into 50 acre farm blocks. There was no official town survey; Childers developed following the private subdivision of portions 870 and 871, at the railhead of the 1887 Isis railway line from Isis Junction railway station. This was opened on 31 October 1887, and was intended principally to facilitate the transport of timber from the scrub. The coming of the railway not only promoted the development of the town of Childers; it also proved the catalyst for the establishment of a sugar industry in the district in the late 1880s. At the opening of the railway to Childers, Robert Cran, owner of Maryborough's Yengarie mill, announced that he would erect a double crushing juice mill at Doolbi, to supply his mill at Yengarie. This was completed in 1890, with the juice being brought in railway tankers from the Isis. Further expansion of the sugar industry in the Isis was closely related to the activities of the Colonial Sugar Refining Company, which erected a central crushing mill in the district 1893-94, and began crushing in 1895. By 1895, at least three other mills had been established in the Isis, with another two under construction, and Childers had emerged as the flourishing centre of a substantial sugar-growing district.〔 Whilst Queensland in general was in a slow recovery mode following the depression of the early 1890s and the 1893 banking crisis, Childers offered attractive advantages to any banking institution contemplating expansion. The Bank of North Queensland was the first to seize the opportunity, and in a notice dated 6 September 1895, published in the Brisbane Courier on the following day, the general manager of the Bank of North Queensland, announced that an agency of the bank was now opened at Childers, for the transaction of all usual banking business. Joseph Harding Forbes is recorded as having entered the service of the Bank of North Queensland on 10 September 1895 as the first manager of the new branch at Childers.〔 It is not known from which premises the bank operated initially, as the Bank of North Queensland did not acquire the present site until August 1899. By this time a branch of the Commercial Banking Company of Sydney had been established in the town, opening in rented premises in 1897. The CBC acquired a permanent site in May 1899, and by March 1900, their new purpose-built banking chambers were approximately 6 weeks from completion. This activity may have induced the Bank of North Queensland to erect new premises in the same year.〔 In August 1900, Brisbane architect HGO Thomas called tenders for the erection of new banking premises at Childers. This is understood to be for the Bank of North Queensland, as the CBC had already erected premises, and the only other bank in the town, the Queensland National Bank, had opened in rented premises in July 1900, and did not erect their own building until 1919.〔 The Bank of North Queensland building at Childers survived the 1902 fire which razed most of the premises on the opposite side of the street. The town was virtually rebuilt at this time.〔 In January 1917, the Bank of North Queensland and the Royal Bank of Queensland, established in Brisbane in 1885 to challenge the colonial dominance of the Queensland National Bank, merged to form the Bank of Queensland, and the premises at Childers were retained as a branch of the new bank. When the Bank of Queensland was absorbed by the National Bank of Australasia in 1922, the Childers building became a branch of the National Bank.〔 By , a verandah had been added along the eastern side and rear of the building, apparently for the use of the manager and his family. In November 1953, the Isis Shire Council approved an application by the National Bank of Australasia Ltd to erect a new bank manager's residence in Childers, and photographic evidence suggests that at this time the living quarters at the back of the building were incorporated into the banking area, the side and rear verandahs were removed, as were the central pediment, finials, and brackets and capitals to the front verandah posts. The new manager's residence, erected at the rear of the bank building, on the block of land facing Crescent Street, does not form part of the heritage listing.〔 Since 1983, the Childers office has functioned as a branch of the National Australia Bank, formed by the amalgamation of the National Bank of Australasia Ltd and the Commercial Banking Company of Sydney Ltd.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「National Australia Bank, Childers」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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