page_title: Queensland National Bank, Childers
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Queensland National Bank, Childers / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Childers branch of the Queensland National Bank in 1912. Horse and wagon outside the bank. Unidentified people on the wagon. This branch opened in 1900, another bank was opened in 1919 and the bank ceased operation here 18 January 1943. (Description supplied with photograph.).
context_page_description: Queensland National Bank is a heritage-listed former bank building at 50 Churchill Street, Childers, Bundaberg Region, Queensland, Australia. It was designed by Philip Oliver Ellard Hawkes and built in 1919. It is also known as Childers Travel World, Wrench & Cobb, and Ye Olde Boutique. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 21 October 1992.
context_section_description: The former Queensland National Bank is a masonry building in the main street of Childers and was the second building used by this bank on this site. It was erected in 1919 to the design of Maryborough architect POE Hawkes.
  The Queensland National Bank was the first and most successful of Queensland's three indigenous 19th century banks. It was established in March 1872 by a group of prominent Queensland squatters, politicians, lawyers, and businessmen who wished to secure development capital free from overseas or intercolonial control. Its first office was established in Queen Street, Brisbane in that year and the bank attracted widespread Queensland patronage. In 1879 it secured the whole of the Queensland Government's banking business. By 1880 it held 40% of deposits in the colony and dominated the Queensland economy. This was not, however, the first bank established in Childers, the Bank of North Queensland and the Commercial Banking Company of Sydney both being present in the 1890s and erecting premises in the newly emerging sugar town in 1900.
  Following logging of the dense Isis Scrub in the 1870s, Childers, in the heart of the scrub, was promoted by Maryborough interests in the 1880s as an agricultural district. The land in the immediate vicinity of the present town was surveyed in 1882 into 50 acres (20 ha) farm blocks. There was no official town survey and Childers developed following private subdivision at the railhead of the 1887 Isis railway line from Isis Junction. 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 provided the catalyst for the establishment of a sugar industry in the district. 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, completed in 1890. 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 this time, at least three other mills had been established in the Isis, with another two under construction, and Childers had emerged as the centre of a substantial sugar-growing district. In 1903 the old Isis Divisional Board (1886) was abolished and Isis Shire proclaimed, with the new seat of municipal government moving from Howard to Childers.
  Whilst Queensland in general was slow to recover from the depression of the early 1890s and the 1893 banking crisis, the growth of commerce in Childers was attractive to banking institutions contemplating expansion. The Queensland National Bank initially rented a timber commercial building on this site, together with an adjacent timber house as a residence for the bank manager and opened for business on 9 July 1900. In 1909 they purchased this property and in 1919 erected a new and more prestigious building to the design of Maryborough architect, POE Hawkes. An undated floor plan in the archives of the National Australia Bank (the ultimate successor to the Queensland National Bank) shows what appears to be the current building. It has counters surrounding a public area, a room for clerical use behind them, a specially reinforced strong room, a manager's room and a bathroom and bedroom for the bank officer to the rear. The bank was constructed by a Mr Steffensen at a cost of £1645 and the previous building was sold for removal.
  Architect Philip Oliver Ellard Hawkes was born in 1882 in New South Wales and worked in Perth, Launceston and Melbourne. Moving to Queensland, he worked briefly for the Works Department in 1909 before setting up his own practice in Bundaberg and Maryborough in 1910. He designed a number of premises for the QN Bank: most of these were simple timber buildings, although the Kingaroy branch was a two storey masonry building, also in a classical revival style. This also 
caption: The first bank building of the Queensland National Bank in Childers, 1912
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