Westpac staff past and present celebrated the banks 200th birthday at The Frat in Fairy Meadow in April.
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The celebration on the actual anniversary of the first bank opening in Macquarie Place, Sydney doubled as a reunion as many familiar faces from over the years came together.
“We are here to celebrate the birthday of Australia’s oldest company and bank. It was all set up by Governor Lachlan Macquarie,” Deanne Collins said.
“We have a lady here tonight “Joan Tye, of Nowra,” whose husband joined the bank in 1951 and managers here with over 40 years of service. We are here to celebrate the contribution that each and everyone has made to the success of the company, customers and communities helped along the way”.
Mrs Tye said her husband Kevin Tye was involved in 49 different branches while in the bank. Tom Rumery said he started working at Westpac in 1948 in George Street, Sydney. He later worked in Thirroul and Wollongong.
Italo Baraldi was part of the organising committee for the dinner and is a member of the Hall of Fame for 40 years service to Westpac.
The birthday came soon after members of the Westpac Tour 200 Tour de Cure team presented three local charites money raised from their recent 200 charity ride.
Tour de Cure managing director Matt Clarke attended a recent presentation where he handed $10,000 to Illawarra Cancer Care co-director Anthony Arnold, Port Kembla Palliative Care’s Dr Greg Barclay and Illawarra Cancer Carers president Ian Mackay.
Westpac Commercial Banking Illawarra senior relationships manager Andrew Whitaker said the riders experienced some interesting weather in early March which had the highest rainfall on record for that time of year.
“In amongst that our goal of $500,000 raised has been surpassed with $1,074,280 raised,” he said.
Other local recipients of funding were Quest for Life and Southern Highlands Cancer Centre Trust Fund, the University of Wollongong and Illawarra Health and Medical Research Institute and Chris O’Brien’s Lifehouse.
Funding was also provided to research projects such as that headed by Dr Tobias Trahair at the University of NSW. $200,000 will be used for research into Lymphoblastic Leukaemia in children.
“Originally there was to be only one $200,000 donation, a smaller $60,000 donation and then local $10,000 donations, Mr Whittacker said.
“The additional monies will see another large research project funded along with some of the smaller $60,000 requests as well.”