The story
Founding
The Bank of Australia was formed in 1826 by a producers' and merchants' group as a rival to the Bank of New South Wales. The bank opened on 3 July 1826 in George Street, Sydney. The first directors of the bank were: Thomas Macvitie (managing director), Edward Wollstonecraft, John Macarthur, Richard Jones, Thomas Icely, John Oxley, George Bunn, W.J. Browne, Hannibal Macarthur, James Norton, and A.B. Spark.
It was dubbed the "pure merino" bank because its share register included the plutocracy of the colony, but excluded the ex-convicts who had been associated with the Bank of New South Wales.
1828 bank theft
In September 1828, thieves tunnelled into the Bank of Australia in Lower George Street, Sydney and stole about £14,000, described in 2008 as "the largest documented bank theft" in Australian history (in relative values and expressed as a proportion of GDP).
From Wikipedia’s article on Bank of Australia, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3