Item 04: Memoirs of a Colonial Boy by Robert Joseph Stewart, ca. 1971 - Page 77
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[Page 77]
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of the mining boom. As a result of the farming prosperity and closer settlement of the district, these decrepit buildings were steadily being pulled down (some well-insured ones were burnt down) and rebuilt in brick. One of the first of these more substantial erections was a tall three-storey general store built at the north end of the main street, about the end of the last Century, by a French immigrant, Mazoudier; he also established one of the first hotels in the town, a small wooden one located where the Masonic Hall now stands. Years later one of his grandsons was Mayor of Parkes for a term. The prinicipal hotel was Tattersalls, a big rambling two-storey brick building with long wide verandahs, on a corner facing the Square: it was demolished in 1962 to make way for a more modern pub. There were five other red-brick hotels looking much the same as they are today, except for some extension and modernisation.
Four Chartered Banks were functioning in less pretentious premises than they occupy now. Two, the Union and the Australasia were English or Scottish controlled, and merged, later, into the A.N.Z. The other two, the Commercial of Sydney and the Australian Bank of Commerce, were Sydney directed.
These Banks issued their own characteristic banknotes, a right which was withdrawn when Commonwealth Treasury banknotes began circulating in 1911. At first these were merely the old private banknotes surcharged by two black lines across the middle of them, between which was printed, "Commonwealth of Australia. Payable in gold at the Commonwealth Treasury on demand". It was claimed that every "paper pound" was backed by a gold sovereign, which were quite freely in circulation. Bank Tellers had a stock question when customers were cashing cheques, "Do you want notes or gold?" A customer could have had a hundred golden sovereigns there and then, and many more on giving some short notice. Sovereigns could be in every man's pocket, and notes were only taken for convenience in handling large amounts of cash. The Commonwealth Bank was established in 1912, the founder being Denison (later Sir Denison) Miller a schoolmate, at the Deniliquin Public School of my future