Over Abbotsford (Melbourne), Victoria, Australia
Ah, the CBD. The beating heart of corporate Victoria.
At the far left of the frame we have Collins Place at 35 Collins Street, which I described in image 19712. It was Telstra branded when I took the shot, but 7 years later in 2018 the company would slash staff and vacate the premises. There is also a rather nice looking hotel in the building.
Of the ASX 20, the 20 largest public companies on the Australian Stock Exchange, four are banks. Five, if you count Macquarie which I suppose you could describe as a type of bank if you were being generous. And boy do you see that represented here.
Still near the left of frame and a little behind the then-Telstra building, we have a building branded with the symbol of the oldest bank; the red W of Westpac. (The Bank Of New South Wales was launched in 1817 making it Australia's oldest existing bank. The change of name to Westpac happened in 1982 when it merged with the Commercial Bank Of Australia (CBA). Same bank, new name. No, hardly anyone remembers the CBA.) You won't see that W there in 2025. The building is 360 Collins Street. It is managed by Jones Lang LaSalle which these days goes by the name JLL because it's kewler, you know, and JLL's web site gives pretty much zero useful information about the building (number of floors, space per floor, you know, all that boring stuff). Within a mere 1 month after this flight it was announced that Westpac would move to a new glazed monstrosity of a building which was constructed behind the historic Scots Church at 150 Colins Street. A newspaper report at the time said that Westpac would be moving out of 360 Collins Street some time in 2014, and that was indeed around the time that the red W vanished. These days the building wears the DXC Technology brand.
To the right we have, or had, the second of the 4 banks; the Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited, also known as ANZ. They strike me as being the banking equivalent of a chicken with its head cut off, running around not knowing what they want to do or how they want to do it. They therefore seem to lurch from crisis to crisis, comfortably buffered by membership of a small oligopoly in a moderately sized market. But that's just an opinion. This building has more mystery to it than Dracula's castle. It appears to be Queen & Collins (as in, on the corner of those two streets) and is owned by the property group GPT. When was it built? Before 2011 clearly. How tall is it? 34 stories, but other than that who knows? It incorporates a gothic bank from ANZ's predecessor ESANDA (English, Scottish and Australian Bank, bought by ANZ in 1970) as well as the original Melbourne Stock Exchange. How much of the building was occupied by ANZ and when? {Shrug}. The ANZ sign that we see here was on the building at least between 2009 and mid-2019, but doesn't seem to be there any longer.
Ah, so that's why. From the Australian Financial Review, 8 December 2016, some 5 years after this flight:
"GPT fund buys ANZ history for $275m
By Nick Lenaghan, Updated Dec 8, 2016 – 6.18pm
GPT Group's unlisted office fund has finalised its $275 million acquisition of the ANZ Bank's former headquarters on the corner of Collins and Queen Street in Melbourne.
The property combines a 34-storey commercial tower on Queen Street with historic Gothic-style buildings which continue from Queen Street around into Collins Street.
Under the complex deal, ANZ itself will retain its control over the most prominent of the heritage buildings, the so-called Gothic Bank building which was completed in 1887 as the head office of the English, Scottish & Australian Bank.
The bank will also retain its control over the basement at 90 Queen Street in the Safe Deposit Building.
The third of the three historic buildings on Collins Street, the old Stock Exchange Building, will be taken over by GPT."
The octagonal building with the name AON (an insurance and risk management company) I also discussed in image 19712. In 2011, that was 80 Collins Street. Now it's 80 Collins Street North Tower.
A little beyond and to the right we see the symbol of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA); the yellow square with a black cut out, also known as the SAO biscuit dipped in Vegemite. That is 385 Bourke Street. The 169 metres, 41 floor building was constructed between 1975 and 1983 as the headquarters of the State Bank of Victoria (SBV). That bank was taken over by the Commonwealth Bank in 1990. Well... that's a diplomatic way of putting it. In reality SBV's merchant bank subsidiary Tricontinental ran the institution into the ground through questionable lending practices leading to a $AUD 1.5 billion (with a "b") loss. Ooops. In 2012, however, a year after this shot, the CBA decided to bug out down the street to the Docklands district, leaving the landlord with an 18,000 sq m hole to fill. The SAO with Vegemite logo was gone by mid-2013. Today, you will see the UniSuper logo on the building. The CBA was itself originally a government owned bank, having been established by the Commonwealth government in 1911, then floated as a privatised company in 1996.
A little further down Bourke Street and on the other side of it we see the last of the "Big Four", the National Australia Bank at 500 Bourke Street. The name of the building is National Bank House. No, not National Australia, just National Bank. That's what the bank was before it merged with the Commercial Banking Company of Sydney to become the NAB in 1982. However this building was completed in 1978, as the headquarters for what was, at the time, just the National Bank. As far as I have been able to determine it is still in use, although the headquarters of the NAB is in, you guessed it, Docklands.
Beyond we see the Yarra River, and the Bolte Bridge that I discussed in image 19667. You can also see Fisherman's Bend, which at the time of this shot was still being used to produce parts of Holden automobiles. In fact you have a better chance of seeing some of the industrial structures in this shot than in the one where I discussed the Holden closure (image 19683). Also visible is the Port of Melbourne. Further down the river and around its bend you can make out the West Gate Bridge which cuts across near Port Phillip Bay. That, I need to leave for another time.
Jumping back to the foreground, about half way across the bottom of the frame we see St Patrick's Cathedral. To the left of that and a couple of blocks further back, we can see the classical outline of the 5 star, 1884 Windsor Hotel on Spring Street.
I wouldn't mind staying at the Windsor someday, and certainly I'd like to see what photo ops the gothic banks in the former ANZ building provide.
