Comfort in Australia’s unproductive North and the attendant anxiety of tropical cyclones

Abstract

In 1922, the Commonwealth Bank opened in Cairns, North Queensland, on the corner of Abbott and Spence Street, not far from the Esplanade and the waters of the Trinity Inlet. A single-story timber building, “bolted together” and pinned to the ground by sunken concrete piers, the structure was described in the local press as “cyclone proof” and the strongest timber building in Australia. Cooled by fifty exhaust vents and simplex windows, the banking chamber also met the requirements of its tropical context and was described as an “ideal office interior” in which the “health and fitness of the staff have been considered in all essentials from first class sanitation to an up-to-date ventilation system.”In this paper the entanglement of comfort—the health and fitness of the bank’s workers, both physical and psychological—with the bank’s design—both tropical and cyclone proof—will be examined. I will argue that the Commonwealth Bank was an early example of a commercial building designed to respond to tropical cyclones, a common occurrence in Northern Australia, but one which had little impact on the planning and construction of buildings at this time. While the bank was built to replace an earlier, smaller building inadequate to the institution’s needs, it was also a direct response to a catastrophic cyclone—the strongest on record—which hit Cairns and surrounding districts on February 2, 1920. Devastating the city and neighboring towns, the cyclone produced a significant storm surge, described in the press as a “tidal wave,” that inundated the city’s central business district, including Abbott Street, where the bank building was located. The structural properties and technical innovations of the new building effectively addressed the anxieties that this event, and subsequent cyclone seasons, would continue to evoke.It will also be argued that the bank building and its widely publicized innovations were part of a larger campaign by the institution (and other northern businesses) to attract staff from the cooler southern parts of Australia (Brisbane, Sydney, and Melbourne), and particularly men (managers and accountants) with wives and children. Promising both safety and comfort for its workers and their families, the bank, it will be argued, also sought to counter the popular conviction that Northern Australia was not suitable for settlement and must remain empty and unproductive. This was achieved by the banking corporation through the national promotion of the lifestyles (and especially sporting activities) of the bank workers, the climatic suitability of the bank buildings, and the technical innovations that ensured it was “cyclone proof.”