Queensland National Bank, Forest Hill

Queensland National Bank is a heritage-listed bank at 3 Victoria Street, Forest Hill, Lockyer Valley Region, Queensland, Australia. It was built. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 21 October 1992.HistoryThis single-storey timber building was erected c.1909 as offices for the Forest Hill branch of the powerful Queensland National Bank, established in 1872. The building was constructed on land leased, in November 1909, from Forest Hill property owner Allister McAllister. McAllister had acquired the site in 1897, as part of a larger block at the corner of Victoria and William Streets, on which he erected the Lockyer Hotel c.1906. The new QNB building was erected adjacent to the hotel and close to the railway depot, in the commercial centre of the town. The Queensland National Bank first opened a branch office at Forest Hill on 10 September 1901, in leased premises. A c.1908 photograph shows the branch occupying part of George Wyman's store in Victoria Street. It was the town's first bank, opened during the early 20th century growth of Forest Hill as a railhead and service centre, following closer agricultural settlement of the area in the late 1890s and early 1900s.Until the 1880s, Forest Hill was part of the 20,000 acre Rosewood run, first taken up by DC McConnel in 1840, and later occupied by Kent & Wienholt, who worked the station in conjunction with their Jondaryan run. The Forest Hill land was heavily timbered, with some large gum swamps. The Ipswich to Toowoomba railway was surveyed between Laidley and Gatton in 1865, but a siding was not established in the Forest Hill area, about a mile and a half closer to Laidley than the present Forest Hill railway station, until c.1881. Originally it was called Boyd's Siding, servicing the property of Mr AJ Boyd, about 4 miles from the railway line. Boyd, the first agriculturalist in the area, planted an orchard and named his property Forest Hill, after which the siding was named in the early 1880s. This siding was shifted to the site of the present Forest Hill station c.1887.