Our Stories

Many long-standing credit union people remember Oleg Rozmeta fondly. This interview with him was recorded as a promotion for the Association of NSW Credit Unions (ANSWCU) in 1990. The interview covers two parts of Oleg’s career, the first beginning in 1971 when he was Education Officer of ANSWCU where he led an army of volunteers…

Tom Kelly was a co-founder of Australian Mutuals Archives in 1985 and a credit union stalwart. In 2004 our forerunners published a small booklet called “The Life and Times of Tom Kelly”. It was released primarily for distribution at the 2004 Australian Institute of Credit Union Management (AICUM) Conference in Albury. The booklet is one…

There are several contenders for “first credit union” in Australia. We looked at the Co-operative Credit Bank of Victoria and Universal Credit Union recently and Home Owners’ Co-operative Credit Society is another contender. It comes down to how “credit union” is defined. Today we would call them all customer owned banks. The impetus for credit…

A little historical gem was donated to us recently. The Bega Valley Credit Union minute book from 1965-1980 was passed onto us by Kim Morris, Chief Marketing Officer of Horizon Bank. Bega Valley Credit Union merged with Illawarra County Council Staff Credit Union in 1980, which is today known as Horizon Bank. Along with annual…

In the last few years the Customer Owned Banking sector has been supporting regional Australia in a campaign to retain bank branches in the bush (see here). We’ve been here before, however. In the mid-1990s Cuscal partnered with the Commonwealth and NSW Governments to help preserve financial services in the bush. This came on the…

In our 40th year of operations Australian Mutuals Archives is making available online some historical publications we have produced ourselves. The first of which is Memories & Recollections which was published in 2002 as a joint venture by our forbears the Australian Credit Union Historical Co-operative and the Australian Credit Union Archives. A lot of…

The fourth edition in our series of ANSWCU videos from 1990 features Bill Howe. Bill had an illustrious career which included becoming the first Australian President of the World Council of Credit Unions (WOCCU) in 1982. This is a position the current COBA CEO Mike Lawrence holds. In the interview Bill discusses how Australia is…

Sutherland Credit Union was a fixture in the Sutherland Shire in the south of Sydney for many years but as is the mutual way, it started small …. The Lucas Heights nuclear research facility (today known as ANSTO) holds Australia’s only nuclear research facility. It also produces radiopharmaceuticals. In August 1970, workers at Lucas Heights…

Banking has a long and varied history, whether it is banking in ancient Rome, merchant banking in renaissance Italy or more modern retail banking (accepting deposits, money lending, exchanges and transferring funds). However, early banking was not readily available for the everyday working person or the poor.  The idea of a ‘savings bank’ with the…

Kevin Yates is often regarded as the founder of the credit union movement in Australia.  In October 1946, Mr Yates founded Universal Credit Union in Sydney. There had been co-operative banking in Australia before but historian Gary Lewis noted that Universal “was considered by many to be the first ‘true’ credit union in Australia because…

According to the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research (BOSCAR) the rate of robbery with a firearm in NSW was 12.59 per 100,000 people in 1995 and in 2024 it was 1.10 per 100,000 people. Meanwhile, according to BOSCAR incidences of cybercrime in NSW rose by 42% in the period 2019-2022. In 2025 cybercrime…

Australian Mutuals Archives was saddened to learn of the passing of Dr Race Mathews, former Victorian and federal politician, labour historian and enthusiastic champion of mutuals and co-operatives. Dr Mathews had a lifelong interest in fair and democratic ways of doing business, politics and life and that led him to co-ops and mutuals. He was…