Pictured at Left The Bank of Adelaide Keith Branch Opened 19th July 1909. First Manager Frank Carr McLean. The Branch closed in 1918. The same site was later used by The Commercial Bank of Australia.

Pictured at Right The Bank of Adelaide Swan Reach. The Branch opened on the 23rd August 1909 on the corner Victoria Street and Hasse Hill Road in a converted house. The first Manager was Claus Johannes Hans Bamberger. The building was mostly washed away during the 1956 flood. The Branch closed in 1972 and became an agency of Sedan Branch.

Pictured at Left The Bank of Adelaide, Lameroo Branch. These were the first premises in 72 Railway Terrace and the Branch opened on the 22nd November 1906. The first Manager was William Henry Skinner. A new brick and stone building was occupied on the 10th May 1910 at 72 Railway terrace and then on the 26th June 1967 new premises opened on the same site.

Pictured below The Bank of Adelaide, Waikerie Branch. The first premises opened on the 18th April 1910 in a cellar and then the Bank rented premises in a fabricated building from 1911. The first Manager was Terrence George Dowling.

William (Bill) Francis Belford's story on his early years in The Bank of Adelaide.

The following biography on Bill Belford appeared in The Bank of Adelaide Staff Magazine on the 20th December 1972.

On the 26th May 1941, two young lads entered Perth Office and commenced their careers. One was D.N. Spargo, and the other (who was transferred to Fremantle within an hour of joining) was a ginger-haired 15 year old boy by the name of William Francis Belford. Within just over two years he had joined the R.A.A.F. and some time later was off to Canada where he trained and rose to the rank of Flight Sergeant Pilot.

Managing to avoid (as he puts it) operational service, Bill resumed with the Bank at the end of the war and found time to study accountancy, play football and start courting a young lady named Joan Poole whilst working in Perth Office. All four activities resulted in success. He graduated from the W.A. Institute of Technology as an A.A.S.A.; played Amateur League football for the Combined Banks in Perth during the years 1946/47; married Joan Poole in 1949 and is today the Superintendent of our Savings Bank.

Bill was born in the Western Australian wheat-belt town of Dalwallinu, 170 miles north-east of Perth in June 1925, and was brought up on a farm at Ballidu, twenty miles nearer the city. His father was an interesting man; M.A. (Edinburgh), school teacher by profession and farmer by inclination, painter, sculptor and author of the history of 11th Battalion, who had immigrated from Scotland in 1912, and who, at 85 must be one of Australia's oldest New Australians.

Bill was the second youngest of five children who travelled four miles to school at Ballidu each day in a horse and cart. Later, he was allowed to go on horseback. A scholarship took him to Northern High School which he left to answer an advertisement offering vacancies on the Staff of The Bank of Adelaide. In 1947 Bill went to Sydney but returned two years later and spent the next eleven years at Perth Office, rising to the position of Chief Clerk before being transferred to South Australia.

After twelve months on the Relieving Staff, he was appointed Manager of Pulteney Street Branch in 1962, and four years later took charge of Woodville. Here he became involved with the S.A. Spastic Paralysis Association Inc., and has remained its Hon. Treasurer.

A camarederic man who enjoys life, Bill also enjoys his golf and can be found on the Mount Lofty links most weekends exercising his handicap of 16. Philately and numismatics also help to occupy his spare time. Last year (1971) he spent a brief six months as Manager of Rundle Street Branch before going to his present Head Office appointment of Superintendent of The Bank of Adelaide Savings Bank Limited. This position was followed in 1975 by being appointed Metropolitan Divisional Inspector, a position he held until the merger in 1980. At the merger he was appointed Manager S.A. & N.T. A.N.Z. Bank Cards, a position held until retirement in February 1984. As well, he was recently appointed to the Australian Banks' Charge Cards Planning Committee.

Bill lives at Marden and he and his wife have two daughters, Christine, who has just turned 21 and Linley, aged 19, Joan Belford is a previous President and active member of the Officers Wives Club, and also assists Meals on Wheels each week.

Having spent some of his earlier summers playing cricket, Bill has been President of the Bank's Cricket Club for some years - but assures all enquirers that he has definitely and finally retired as a player!

And now for Bill's own story..............

After completing my schooling I was accepted by The Bank of Adelaide as a junior clerk and commenced my working life in Fremantle. I had responded to an advertisement for a junior bank clerk which I had read whilst on term holidays back on the farm. The day I started work, which was 26th. May 1941, so did another lad (the other being the late Doug N. Spargo) and I lost the toss and was sent to our Fremantle Branch. (Pictured below left Fremantle Branch and right Perth Branch)

I boarded with the Luke family at 8, Orient Street, South Fremantle, and travelled by tram to work each day. The distance to the town centre was approximately 2 kilometres and the one way fare was 3 cents. If one travelled before 8.30 in the morning a return ticket costing 4 cents could be purchased. The Lukes had 3 children, one a lad of my age who worked for Boans Ltd, Perth’s premier department store. He was responsible for ‘spotting’ crates of goods destined for Boans which were stored in the various warehouses on the wharf at Fremantle and thus had a pass for this restricted area.

Fremantle branch in 1941 was a three handed branch consisting of , Manager, Accountant and junior clerk. I was to replace the current junior who was about to go into aircrew course 18 and frankly was not very interested in showing me the ropes, so when he left at the end of the week I was a very inexperienced replacement. The Manager was a perfectionist who expected everyone to be 100 per cent on top of their job and many times in those early days he told me that I would need to show vast improvement or there would be no way that my employment would be confirmed at the end of my ‘probationary term’ of six months. (The Bank of Adelaide opened its first interstate non capital city Branch at Fremantle in 1924. The present building was purchased by the Bank in the previous year and its banking chamber, with wide counters, high partitions and wood panelling, is in keeping with the traditional and historical atmosphere of the area. High Street, on the corner of which the Bank stands, was built by convict labour, and cobblestones can still be seen in some sections of the city to this day. The Branch has a great deal to do with shipping companies, customs and forwarding agents, and importers and exporters that are involved with the business activities of the port. In the past it has been very concerned with the wool trade and its connected foreign exchange work, and for many years this business was of great importance to the Branch. However, the recent decline in the price of wool has lessened the work in this field. As the city of Fremantle grows in importance, and as more and more industries commence operations in the district, our Branch will go from strength to strength.)

The starting salary for a junior clerk in a Bank in 1941 was $150- per annum paid bi-monthly. I was paying $2.50 per week for full board and lodging so I was left with the equivalent of approximately 38 cents per week for myself. Fortunately this was augmented by tea money [paid if one worked after 6pm] at the rate of 15 cents per meal. I usually worked late twice a week so this almost doubled my spare cash but I was still up against it financially,. bearing in mind that I had to provide for my own lunch. However I had a brain wave, I requested my parents to send my trusty old bike down from the farm so that I could at least save the tram fares which cost about 20 cents per week. I worked out that with this saving I would probably just squeeze through.

The bike duly arrived and, as it had been used only in the country, it did not possess any lights. So after work that day I went to the Fremantle railway station and took delivery of the bike. As it was already dark I carefully pushed it along Market Street and around to South Terrace. When I reached the Fremantle Hospital I felt fairly safe so hopped on board. I had only travelled about 100 metres when along side came a Motor Cycle policeman who proceeded to hand me an infringement notice for riding at night without a light. The cost of the ticket was 50 cents and took all my intended savings for the first month. But after that I only rode the bike in daylight and I must have covered many Kilometres each weekend whilst I explored the country to the south of Fremantle so it was a good decision to have the bike.

As I mentioned the Manager was a hard man but fortunately the accountant took pity on me and carefully explained all my various duties so that eventually I ‘made it’ in the eyes of my tormenter. Later on after I joined the air force he, the accountant, enlisted in the ground staff and was commissioned as an officer in the ‘pay’ section and when I was in Melbourne awaiting to go overseas I met him one day in the street which was a pleasant surprise He gave me some good fatherly advice on the pitfalls that could befall a young country boy like me in a big City like Melbourne. It was probably good advice but I didn’t take it.

Banking in those days was a far cry from banking today, Ledgers were hand written and the customers each had a ‘pass book’ into which I had to enter the particulars from the respective ledger account. Most of the pass books remained in the branch and once a week I brought them up to date. All entries received into the branch either over the counter, from our other branches, or the other banks had to be entered by me into the ‘Tellers Book’ and this was balanced daily. We did have a slow adding machine, which was hand operated with a lever, to help us and whilst it was slow it was accurate.

My main daily task was to post the Tellers book. This was the centre piece of the behind the scenes activities of the Bank. Every voucher, cheques and deposit amount were entered in the various columns which were all added up at the end of the day. When the Tellers book was ruled off it confirmed the Balance of cash held by the tellers, the value of cheques to be handed over the next day at the clearing house, and confirmed that the Ledger keeper had correctly debited and credited the customers accounts on which there had been operations that day. The actual balancing of the customers accounts occurred weekly when all debit and credit balances were extracted and balanced against the daily figures recorded in the Tellers book

Each morning a representative from each bank met at the Fremantle clearing house where we exchanged each others cheques and at the end of the week settled our accounts. In 1941 in Fremantle the following trading Banks were represented at the Clearing house. Bank of New South Wales, The Commercial Bank of Australia Ltd. Commonwealth Bank of Australia, English Scottish and Australian Bank ltd, The Bank of Australasia, The Union Bank of Australia The National Bank of Australasia Ltd, and The Bank of Adelaide The representative of the National Bank at that time was John Winter, the 1940 state school boy high jump champion. In London in 1948, after serving in the Air Force during the war, he won the Olympic High Jump championship.

One of the most onerous tasks at the Bank was the calculation of interest incurred on customers overdawn accounts. In those days it was all calculated manually by the staff. The method was as follows. To calculate the amount of interest due one had to multiply the amount outstanding [pounds only] by the number of days that that balance had stood. Eg. If an account was overdrawn 500 pounds on 13^th. Of July and the next entry to the account was on 22^nd of July the 500 was multiplied by 9 and 4500 units or decimals,was placed in the column at the extreme right hand side of the ledger page. At balance date,[ The Bank of Adelaide’s was 30^th. September and 31^st March], the total of these units or decimals was converted to pounds, shillings and pence by means of decimal book which had the amounts of decimals relative to a variety of interest rates to cover any fluctuations which may have occurred.

Usually the ledger keeper kept these calculations up to date as he posted the ledgers daily, but to ensure accuracy they all had to be double checked by another responsible officer before the interest was actually debited to the respective accounts.

One day late in November, 1941, Ted Luke came home from work on the Fremantle wharves very excited to say that he had seen German seamen, under military guard escorted off the wharf and taken away in buses. Although nothing was reported in the press, at the time, rumours were rife that the Australian Cruiser "Sydney " had been sunk and that these were the survivors of the German raider "Kormorant" which had engaged the Sydney in battle off the north west coast of Australia. It was subsequently revealed that this was the case. The loss of the Sydney was a big blow to Australia at the time and a personal one to me as Jim Clifton, a fellow officer of The Bank of Adelaide, Perth branch, was one of those lost from the Sydney.

I think I should make mention at this time of the rationing of goods to the Civilian population during the second world war. In November 1940 petrol was the first item to be rationed. As Australia, in those days, was completely dependent on its oil supplies from overseas the increasing activity of the German U boats (submarines) made it prudent for the Australian Government to restrict the use of petrol for non essential purposes and thus enable a reserve supply to be established for emergency use.

I was still at school at this time and living on the farm during school holidays. The initial supplies allowed to primary producers were quite generous and had little effect on the use of our various farm motors but after the Japanese entered the war at the end of 1941 rationing really started to bite. A real ‘black market’ in the sale of petrol ration coupons started and it was common knowledge that they were available at a price in various hotel ‘front bars’ for the rest of the war.

Servicemen were entitled to apply for petrol ration coupons when on leave. To get your hands on some coupons (our entitlement being 2 gallons per 7 days leave) the usual tale was to state that the petrol was needed to enable your family to use their car to take you about whilst on leave. They never seemed to require one to produce a current car registration to back up the application but it was handy for servicemen who lived in the country and who really needed some petrol. Others were known to do a little trading with their coupons when the opportunity occurred

During the war there was a shortage of silver and copper coin due to restrictions placed on the Mints in Perth and Melbourne on the amount of coins they could mint. In Fremantle at this time the main problem was a shortage of pennies. A penny, of which 240 made up a Pound, was the equivalent of one cent but was the size of a twenty cent piece. Banks traded them to each other or the Central Bank in canvas bags containg Five pounds worth [1200 coins]. Most people in Fremantle at that time used Gas for cooking and each house had its own meter into which one could insert pennies to build up a ‘credit’ which was then used up as the gas was used. The Gas company banked at The Bank of New South Wales who consequently had pennies to spare and it was my job to go down the street on a Monday morning to the ‘Wales’ collect 10 pounds worth of pennies for our use during the week.

One morning I was running late and dashed down to the Wales and collected the 2 bags of pennies and set off back to our Bank as the double. Unfortunately I slipped on the corner and down went the coin bags which opened and cascaded pennies all over the footpath and the edge of the roadway. I can tell you that trying to retrieve about 1000 coins in a hurry is not the best way to start the weeks work but I did collect all of them with some help from passers by.

In April 1943 I was transferred to Perth, being replaced at Fremantle by a girl. This trend of the young men being replaced by young girls was occurring throughout Banks and other businesses by this time [1943] as compulsory call ups to the armed services applied to all men reaching the age of 18 . Exemptions from service with the military applied to many industries as these people’s jobs were deemed to be essential to the ‘War effort’. Working in the Perth Office was interesting but I only stayed there until I was accepted for Air Crew training and left the Bank on 19^th. June 1943 for "The duration of the War and six months thereafter.