Nation’s oldest bank has been a backer of business for 208 years

Kim Eberhard
10:00am November 25 2025

The first headquarters of Westpac - then named the Bank of New South Wales - in Sydney was opened in 1853. (Westpac Archives)

As Australia’s first bank, Westpac’s storied history stretches back more than two centuries, to a modest two-storey house near Sydney’s Circular Quay in 1817.

Leased from prominent Sydney businesswoman Mary Reibey, the little house became the bank’s first place of business and living quarters for the bank’s first two employees – a general porter and a security guard. Two bank directors served customers from behind a counter downstairs.

Then named the Bank of NSW, and now the longest continuously operating company in the nation, the bank grew steadily through dramatic times.

Coping with bushrangers on the hunt for the bank’s gold, bought in the goldfields; adapting to the needs of the wool boom; managing the banking difficulties of global recessions and world wars: the bank grew with Australia’s ever-expanding, increasingly diverse and adventurous population.

In 1982, the Bank of NSW joined forces with the Commercial Bank of Australia to become Westpac. One of Australia’s Big Four, Westpac has forged the way with the modern era’s technological innovations.

In the 1980s, Westpac was the first bank to introduce ATMs and EFTPOS. More recently, the EFTPOS Air app was launched for on-the-go payments via smartphones.

From the bank’s first transactions in the early 1800s, recorded with pen and ink in thick ledgers, great care has been to preserve the institution’s history, says Kim Eberhard, Westpac Head of Historical Services.

Set up under the aegis of governor Lachlan Macquarie and founded by 39 prominent citizens of the colony, the nation’s first bank made history from its very first day.

“The significance of what they were doing was obvious to all of them right from the beginning,” Eberhard says.

Elected as the bank’s first chairman, Macquarie was the only board member with any banking experience at all. So with abundant  goodwill and hope, the first bankers more or less made it up as they went along.

Tent branches in the goldfields were a common sight during the gold rush. (Westpac Archives)

Now recognised by UNESCO as “culturally and historically significant”, the bank’s comprehensive records of the time document the first banking activity in the Australasian New World.

In its earliest days, the bank printed notes to replace the unreliable IOUs and rum then widely used as mediums of exchange in NSW – which at the time encompassed passed the territory of both Queensland and Victoria. The bank laid the foundations for the colony’s economy and launched the start of share trading in NSW.

At first, only 200 bank shares were sold – purchases carefully recorded on the back of some of the original share certificates, now ­preserved in the bank archives.

A signature ledger was established for bank customer identification, and transactions from 1817 onwards were listed in account ledgers. Contemporary historians can mine these ledgers to determine exactly who was doing business with whom, and how much money was entailed in each transaction.

The bank also lent money against incoming shipments, of tea or cotton, as well as herds or crops before harvest.

As the years passed, wealth built across the bank’s growing client base. The porter employed from day one, Joseph Hyde Potts, designed some of the banknotes issued in the 1820s. He bought land near Sydney Harbour with his earnings, in the area now called Potts Point.

Largely non-discriminatory, the bank was happy to accept timeserved convicts as customers and even as directors, Eberhard says.

Ahead of the times, the bank employed its first women in 1898, years before most Australian women were given the right to vote. These “lady typewriters” used the new-fangled typewriting machines to type up board minutes, memos, and letters to significant customers.

The women had to keep their jobs quiet to avoid inflaming the furious backlash against female employment – diehards were outraged the women were “taking the jobs of men”.

One of these women stayed with the bank for three decades, discovering along the way that the bank’s male employees could take part in a pension scheme that was denied to women. She repeatedly lobbied the board for change.

A year before she retired in 1939, the bank gave way and agreed to introduce a scheme for women. “The bank became the first private company to offer superannuation for female employees, 54 years before it became compulsory,” Eberhard says.

The Maldon branch in Victoria even had its own gold smelter on site, seen here on the right of the picture. (Westpac Archives)

A spurt of early bank growth was fuelled by gold, which was discovered in the 1850s and transformed the colonies. The bank sent newly hired staff, armed with weapons, ledgers, gold scales, and pen and ink to the goldfields to buy gold – riches that would eventually be sent to London to be sold.

Speculators poured into the goldfields, and bushrangers from Ned Kelly to Captain Midnight to Ben Hall staked out the routes through the bush and over the mountains to the bank. Bank transports were held up on almost every trip, Eberhard says, and the bushrangers had varying success.

Fast forward to the modern era and the golden years of the post-war boom. The bank again adapted to demand, plunging into retail banking for the first time in 1956: offering savings accounts with passbooks and loans for Australians who wanted to buy a car or a fridge, a boat or a caravan.

Eventually there was a push to consolidate for security and expansion. The bank had always been strong in the Western Pacific, with a presence in Fiji since 1901 and New Guinea since 1910.

In 1982, the Bank of NSW and the Commercial Bank of Australia merged and the Western Pacific Banking Corporation was born, a name almost immediately shortened to Westpac – a name now recognised around the world for strength and versatility, polished in its years of growth and maturity in the new nation of Australia.

Kim Eberhard

As Westpac's head of historical services, Kim has responsibility for managing the bank's corporate archives – the largest privately held archives in the Southern Hemisphere. Having commenced her career in media and journalism, Kim found her passion in historical research and documentary heritage and, prior to joining Westpac in 2015, has held a number of archivist and research roles, and was President of the Australian Society of Archivists.

Don't miss

Related articles

From the battlefield to the boardroom: the legacy of a veteran bank CEO

By Kim Eberhard
Head of Historical Services, Westpac

Westpac’s big red “W” turns 50

By Kim Eberhard
Head of Historical Services, Westpac

How Mr Squiggle introduced the computer age

By Kim Eberhard
Head of Historical Services, Westpac

Browse topics