National Bank of Australasia Building (former)

If you are travelling through Mossman between May and October, be sure to visit the Douglas Arts Base gallery and workshop spaces, in the classically designed former National Bank of Australasia in Mill Street. This essentially simple timber building has a masonry façade and portico, alluding to the bank’s strength and reliability. It was designed by prominent Queensland architect Lange Powell, completed in 1936. Port Douglas had been the main town of the region, but its devastation from the cyclone of March 1911 led to the gradual transference of business and administrative functions to Mossman. The courthouse, banking facilities and post office relocated in the 1920s, and in the 1930s a new hospital was built, the Cook Highway constructed from Cairns to Mossman, and new shire offices built. The bank occupied these offices until mergers of banking companies in 1981 led to the formation of the National Australia Bank. In 1986, the Mossman branch moved to new larger premises in Front Street. A closer look at the engravings on the front stairs indicates the subsequent use of the building; that of the Douglas Shire Council Engineering Department which occupied the building between 1987 and 1997.