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Cairns Bank

Australian financial institution

Layered newspapers, civic records and oral-history reels arranged as chronological evidence
History and societyInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 15, 2025
Entity authorityQ96374261 ↗
Source-derived summary

Cairns Bank (formerly and commonly known as "Cairns Penny") is an Australian financial institution, operating primarily in retail banking. It is owned by its customers. It was established in April 1899.

Cairns Bank operates a single outlet at 24 Grafton Street, Cairns City, Queensland (16.9256°S 145.7773°E / -16.9256; 145.7773 (Cairns Bank)).

History

On Saturday 22 April 1899, the Cairns Penny Savings Bank opened for the first time. On the first day 86 accounts were opened and a total of £17/1/9 was deposited with the smallest deposit being one penny.

Over the years, the bank has undergone various transformations and name changes due to legislative changes. These are summarised below:

See also

Banking in Australia

List of banks

List of banks in Australia

List of banks in Oceania

List of oldest companies in Australia

References

Further reading

The Cairns Co-operative Weekly Penny Savings Bank Ltd. established 1889 : 67 years of progress and development. The Bank.

Editorial summary

“Cairns Bank” enters the record as australian financial institution. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Cairns, Bank and Australian can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA strong contextual entry point for chronology, institutions and public events when official records are distinguished from later interpretation. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1899, 1889—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Cairns, Bank and Australian.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Cairns Bank” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Cairns, Bank and Australian provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 15, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q96374261. Authority coordinates are -16.926, 145.777. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1899 and 1889.

Critical limits

Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Cairns Bank”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Cairns Bank primary sources, Cairns Bank archive and Cairns research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Cairns Bank”?
  2. Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
  3. What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Cairns Bank” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.