The year 2012 in Queenstown is shaping up to be one for the history books, with anniversaries of the discovery of gold in Central Otago and service by TSS Earnslaw on the calendar now joined by a one-day exhibition celebrating 150 years of the Bank of New Zealand.
The free travelling road show will visit the Queenstown branch on Rees St on March 8 from 9am to 1pm, after a stop at Wanaka on March 5.
The road show contains artefacts usually reserved for the bank's archives. Visitors to the exhibition will be able to explore banking history and trace the evolution of the institution over the decades.
Among the artefacts will be gold-weighing machines, a gold bar, troy weights, teletype machines and information revealing how the role of banking has changed.
Interactive exhibits will feature images of people and their stories together with the various milestones in the history of BNZ.
Born of the gold rush, the Bank of New Zealand opened in Queenstown on November 29, 1862, in a canvas tent on Ballarat St, next to Eichardt's Private Hotel. The bank moved into a building, also on Ballarat St in 1869 as the frontier town became established.
The bank moved to new premises on Rees St by 1875.
The building was replaced in 1941 and again in the early 1980s.
"BNZ is one of the oldest businesses in Queenstown, with the early bankers trained in not only the rudiments of banking, but also in buying, cleaning and assaying gold," BNZ spokeswoman Erica Lloyd, of Auckland, said this month.
"Bankers were sent from Dunedin, having to trek the Dunstan Track, either by foot or horseback.
"When the first banker arrived in Queenstown, they set up the bank tent, as Queenstown was a 'canvas town' in those days, with no buildings."
The next location of the road show will be in the Cashel and Fitzgerald Sts branch in Christchurch on March 15.
