Westpac Bank Building, Cooktown
historic site in Queensland, Australia
Westpac Bank Building is a heritage-listed former bank building at 120 Charlotte Street, Cooktown, Shire of Cook, Queensland, Australia. It was designed by Francis Drummond Greville Stanley and built from 1891 to 1891. It is also known as Bank of New South Wales and Queensland National Bank. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 11 March 1994.
History
This two-storeyed brick building was completed in 1891, as the premises for the Queensland National Bank. The building was designed by FDG Stanley, who was responsible for the design of a number of bank buildings in Queensland during the 1880s and 1890s.
The gold rush of the early 1870s which attracted miners and speculators to the Palmer River goldfield provided the impetus for the permanent settlement of Cooktown, becoming a municipality in 1876. Cooktown developed rapidly in the mid-1880s and the substantial nature of the buildings in Charlotte Street indicated the town's importance as a port and business centre. The growth of Cooktown and success of the Palmer River goldfields stimulated the growth of the surrounding district and settlement of the Peninsula. The Queensland National Bank commenced business in Cooktown in 1874 and built a small timber premises adjacent to the current site.
The public source identifies “Westpac Bank Building, Cooktown” as historic site in Queensland, Australia. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Westpac, Bank and Building.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q24998040. Authority coordinates are -15.467, 145.250. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1891, 1994, 1876 and 1874.
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This entry incorporates text from “Westpac Bank Building, Cooktown” 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.