Life on the West Island - A banker’s banker

I was saddened to hear of his recent death of my cousin Henry*. We both grew up in a small West Island country town, had a lot in common and spent much time together, including some memorable beachside holidays with his parents and his sisters.

Henry was just over nine months younger than me, and we both attended the town’s primary and high schools. Henry completed Leaving Honours, while I left school after the Leaving year. Both of us joined the National Bank of Australasia (now the National Australia Bank) after we completed our schooling, but because of his extra year of study Henry’s banking career began two years after mine. We never actually worked in the same bank branch, but we kept in touch and had many common experiences.

When we finished school, our career choices were fairly limited – although boys had options for careers which were generally not open to girls at that time. We could apply to join the Post Office (a gateway to a public service career) or a bank; seek local work with a winery or retail business; go on to further study to become a teacher; seek a trade apprenticeship; or take up a job on the family vineyard or farm. It was extremely rare at that time for boys or girls of lower middle class families like ours to enter university or higher education.

Both of our fathers were respected customers of the National Bank, so they spoke to the local manager (two years apart) and within days we were off on the train to the city for a job interview at the imposing and intimidating Victorian edifice containing the state head office of the bank. Shortly after, we received letters of appointment and began as junior clerks at the local National Bank.

Banking in the 1960s was very different from what we might experience today, especially in country and suburban branches. From the start, some of the key watchwords of banking were drummed into Henry and me – trust, balance, civility, respect and duty among others. Above all, balance in the sense that with double entry bookkeeping, totals of debits and credits had to always match exactly.

My very first task (and I think Henry’s as well) was to fill the inkwells, change the nibs on the pens and replace the blotters for the use of customers and to monitor these items during the day. Banking transactions at the time were entirely by cash or cheque, and cheques had to be signed in blue or black ink. New-fangled ballpoint pens (universally known as Biros) could not be used to sign any bank documents, cheques or deposit slips.

It was also the junior’s job to clean and oil the guns issued to all senior officers and tellers to confront potential robbers and to count coins and pack them into tight paper rolls for customer use. Learning how to roll five shillings worth of pennies into trimmed pages of the Bank’s monthly economic reports was a tricky skill.

Twice a day, we had to collect all the deposited cheques from other banks with branches nearby, tabulate and balance them and go to the branch designated for the week to exchange them with the other banks.

But by far the main duty for a junior officer like us was to maintain and balance the Teller’s Cash Sheets of all transactions over the counter every day. These A3 size sheets had multiple columns for listing credits and debits and had to be added and balanced at the bottom of 40 rows of transactions both across and up and down. Naturally, this had all to be done mentally as there were no adding machines or computers. All transactions until 1966 were also in pounds, shillings and pence. At the end of the day, we had to provide a total of cash in and out to each teller, who was responsible for balancing his cash holding (they were all male at that time). This was a pivotal duty, because no staff could go home for the day until each teller’s cash was balanced to the last penny and safely stored in the strongroom. The junior’s maths had to be spot on or we would all be there until late at night checking the addings-up and recounting cash. If the teller’s cash was over, the bank took the surplus. If it was under, the teller had to make up the shortfall.

Henry and I each had one key advantage that greatly assisted our banking careers. Our fathers had both been involved in retailing for years and had excellent mental arithmetic skills, which they passed on to their sons. This meant that we were quick and accurate in maintaining the Teller’s Cash Sheets. Later on, both of us were often sent on temporary assignments as trouble-shooters to assist various branches of the bank with less finely attuned maths skills to balance their books.

But our maths skills were not always an advantage. After a few weeks of branch experience, both of us were sent to the Bank’s in-house school in the city for two weeks of intensive training. In the 1960s, this was regarded as a tremendous perk, because the school was right next to a chocolate factory shop and close to the sorts of takeaway food stores which had not yet arrived in country towns. And we were paid a living-away-from-home allowance for this privilege!

On day one of the course, we were presented with a pile of dummy cheques and vouchers and a blank Teller’s Cash Sheet. Our task was to enter them correctly in the various columns and rows, then add up and balance the entire sheet. We were told that exactly the same test would be issued on the last day of the course, and our managers would be informed of how much we had improved over the fortnight. Unfortunately, both Henry and I failed this test miserably. That was because, unlike the other attendees, we both achieved 100% on the first test and repeated that result on the final day. That meant that we each received an “improvement” score of zero and on returning to work had to account to our respective branch managers for this miserable result!

The course also attempted to teach us to become proper gentlemen who would be an asset to the bank. We had sessions on etiquette – such as which knife to choose for bread, fish or meat and how to hold it correctly (with a closed fist and never with your finger pointing along the back of the knife.) We learned how to polish black shoes properly and the correct way to construct a balanced and neat Windsor knot in our obligatory neckties. And of course, always to hold doors open for ladies and to stand aside to allow them to enter lifts first…

I left the Bank after seven years to take up tertiary studies. Henry was much more of a banker’s banker – the sort of model employee which banks craved, remaining a valued loyal and hardworking employee for more than 30 years. He saw enormous changes in technology and working practices so that the bank which we joined became almost unrecognisable. In some ways, both of us yearned for an earlier age where the local bank manager was a respected and powerful leader of the community and where banks were among the most revered institutions in society. Fortunately, there have been good changes too, with women now able to develop worthwhile banking careers at all levels and no longer forced to accept menial clerical roles and to resign when they married.

Vale Henry – a West Island banker’s banker.