Photographs:

Coolamon, Up-to-Date Store

Elsternwick, Hattams

Footscray, Forges

Gawler, Crosbys

Hahndorf, Muggletons

Shops

ADELAIDE. John Martin & Co. "A sub-basement below the department on the lower-ground floor ... houses the lighting switchboard, air pumps and the modern Lamson Store Service Tube System". (The big store: 80th anniversary bulletin. Adelaide: John Martin, 1946)

ALLORA, Qld. Nobbys Stores. Closed in 1972 and cash railway salvaged by the Historical Society and put in store. "Now the former store has been bought by someone who wants to reopen it as a Collectibles shop, and has offered a large sum of money to buy back and install the cash railway." AMOL Working with Collections website

ASCOT VALE, Vict. Moncur menswear shop, Union Road. Wire system. Closed around 2000.

ASHVILLE (?), NSW. George Hodgson, Jnr & Co. Lamson Cash Ball system installed towards the end of October 1889. "At this period there were only two firms in the colony, besides Messrs Hodgson's, who had adopted it and one of them stated that it was a saving of $500 a year. The railway.. commenced in the ironmongery department; travelled round to the grocery, the general drapery, millinery, men's clothing, and each department of the business. It was understood that the invention was a patent and could only be leased from the original proprietor." (Newsletter of St George Regional Museum, vol. 4, no. 2, April 2003. "We ought indeed to be proud of a firm who would evince such energy as Messrs Hodgson are doing by the adoption of an improvement which is even now looked on as a marvel by the merchants of the largest cities of America and Europe." (Ashfield Advertiser, 2 Nov. 1889)

BEGA, NSW. Co-op Store. "Furnished with a delightful overhead cash-carrier which zooms overhead at a perilously low altitude." Account of 1963.

BENDIGO, Vict. Beehive Store. "Only known surviving pneumatic tube system in Australia. (Miles Lewis, Australian building) who saw it in 1987. Ceased trading in 1980s (Raine in posting to AUS-VIC-GOLDFIELDS-L List, 17 May 2005)

BRISBANE. David Jones. "Cullinanes's had those tubes. Actually, the original David Jones (big department store) in Brisbane had them last time I looked." (B.Christian in posting to alt.sixtyplus, 11/2/02)

BRISBANE, McWhirters (dept. store). Built 1931. "The store was reported to incorporate the latest developments in technology and engineering: fast pneumatic-tube cash systems, modern electric lighting." Gail Reekie in Rob Shields. Lifestyle shopping: the subject of consumption. (Routledge, 1992) p.176

BRISBANE. Red Arcade. "Russell Wilkins ... settled at Irvinebank on Fairfield Road in 1892. He established the Red Arcade selling toys and fancy goods, complete with a novel cash tramway, worked by electric motor, carrying documents for scrutiny or change to customers." BRISbites website. This is presumably the firm involved in the case of Lamson Store Service Co. v. Russell Wilkins & Sons Ltd., 1906

BRISBANE. Uhl's saddlery, Queen Street. Rapid Wire system operating in 1976. (Lamson Solutions 1898-1998)

BYRON BAY, NSW. Old foodstore, corner of Lawson and Jonson Streets. Wire system - cash office was upstairs. Byron Bay website. "A gravity-and-elastic-powered version... The money would shoot up a wire to the first floor... The cashier tripping the catch at their end let the thing run back downstairs." (Ivan Reid in posting to uk.rec.motorcycles group, 16/12/04.)

CAIRNS, Qld. R.H.Kelly's, shoe retailers, Abbott Street. Pneumatic system in 1960s. (Bob Norman of Cairns)

CAIRNS, Qld. Harris Brothers, mercers and drapers, Abbot Street. Wire system. Moved to new store in Mulgrave Road - wire system is now a static display. (Bob Norman of Cairns)

CHARTERS TOWERS, NorthWest, Qld. Stan Pollard's Store, Gill Street. "Until recently Stan Pollards Store still had a flying fox for cash transactions... This extraordinary device was a common feature of large country stores until the 1950s. The flying fox has been removed to the Zara Clark Museum. It is hoped that it will be reinstated so it can be demonstrated." Walkabout website. Installed by Pollard in 1934, when he purchased the Daking-Smith building. Queensland Book of Memories

COOLAMON, NSW. Co-op. Wire system. Shop is now IGA store. (Up-to-Date Store)

COOLAMON, NSW. W.A.Iverach. Moved there from Up-to-Date Store in 1932. Now a newsagents with false ceiling. Wire system. Some parts in store.

COOLAMON, NSW. Up-to-Date Store, 127-129 Cowabbie Street. Australian Heritage website. "The only known in-situ Lamson Cash Carrier System of its kind [cash ball] in the world".Bush Telegraph, 11 Nov 2003. See also Coolamon brochure.

CUE, WA. Bells Emporium, Austin Street. "A fine example of a country store which remains much as it was in its early days, complete with a now inoperative overhead money transfer stsrem." Mount Magnet website

DALBY, Qld. Millinery shop, opposite Westpac Bank. "Still has the cash railway, used to carry cash from one side of the shop to the other." (Dalby website)

DEVONPORT, Tas. River Don Trading Company. Wire system. Devonport Times, Jan. 2002

DROUIN, Vict. Bell and Macaulays. Wire system approx. 1944. (Photographs of hardware and grocery sections in National Library Digital Collection)

GALONG, NSW. Killicks Store. Wire system. (Up-to-Date Store documentation)

GAWLER, SA. H.B.Crosby Pty. Ltd., Essex House, Murray Street. "It was in 1980 that the 'Flying Foxes' were replaced in Crosby's store but they still attract tourists who are fascinated with the rare relic of early commercial transactions... The 'Flying Fox' system of cash carriers with 13 stations were [sic] installed in 1912 and was manufactured by Lamson Engineering Co. of Adelaide, who also made up spare parts for the carriers." The Bunyip and photo at Walkabout website. There are nine counter positions. "The present managing director, Mr Arthur Cooper.. says the 'Flying Fox' system is just as efficient as it was half a century ago." (Lamson Newsletter, July 1973).

GAYNDAH, Qld. Mellor's(drapery) 28 Capper Street. "The only remaining 'flying fox' in operation. Travel Australia and Australia Gazetteer websites. "The system involves money being sent whizzing along wires to a central cash office." About-Australia.com

GLEN INNES, NSW. Kwong Sing store. "Cash from sales and the dockets were conveyed by an overhead wire and pulley system to the cashier's office". Photograph shows "Tintara wines advertising mirror with one of the cashier's pulleys on display." (Rapid Wire system). Golden Threads website "Sections of the interior retain the features ... the old cashier's pulley". Migration Heritage Center website

HAHNDORF, SA. Muggleton's General Store and Restaurant. Replica Rapid Wire system made by Vivian Rush Specialty Engineering about 2002. There are two lines in the restaurant and all orders and bills are sent by them. (V.Rush) Photographs

KALGOORLIE, WA. Montgomery Brothers, Hannan Street. "In 1902 they established a store in Kalgoorlie... Montgomery's operated as an emprorium, stocking furnishings, manchester and clothing. The distinctive interior featured an arched canopy supported on cast iron columns. It operated a Lampson [sic] Rapid-Wire Service with ten lines; a flying fox system of cash service, used before cash registers... This building has operated as a restaurant since 1998 and has adopted the name Monty's." Kalgoorlie Tourism Brochure

KEMPSEY, NSW. Barsby, 8-12 Smith Street. "The store once boasted a change booth and a network of wires used to centralise transactions - the 'cash railway' as it was called. Remnants of this were still to be found around the storeroom into the late 1970s. Barsbys website

KORUMBURRA, Vict. Delvins General Store, Coal Creek Heritage Village. "Watch the Cash Carrier whiz [sic] around the store." Coal Creek website

KRAKOTA, Byron Bay, NSW. Old Foodstore at corner of Lawson and Jonson streets. Flying fox system. Shelley Neller in Byron Times

LOXTON, SA. Eudunda Farmers (hardware, men's and ladies' wear, groceries, drapery). "As an employee in the menswear department, Win wrapped all kinds of clothing items and shoes in brown paper and tied them up with string. She was never however, allowed to handle the money. As many settlers tell, the store had a system whereby the sales assistant placed the docket and the money in a container inside a little wire cage which was whizzed, by an overhead system of cables, to an upstairs cash office. There, a woman would take out the money, work out the payable change, place it in the container, pull a lever and send it back down to the assistant to give to the customer. Vern Hallam recalls that kids loved to go into Eudunda Farmers to watch the little container flying over their heads across the shop." (George, Karen. "A place of their own: the men and women of war service land settlement at Loxton after the Second World War". Kent Town, SA: Wakefield, 1999), p. 283.

MELBOURNE. M.Ball & Co. (Ball's Corner Store, drapers), Richmond. Entered a hire purchase agreement with Lamsons on 23 September 1936 for a wire system, but a drawing was also produced for a pneumatic tube system. (Miles Lewis, Australian building)
"A man, presumably the manager, demonstrating the 'flying fox' wire cash receipt system. Victoria State Library Pictures Catalogue. Operated from 1936 to 1985 and relocated soon afterwards to Dimneys - see below. (Miles Lewis, Australian building)

MELBOURNE. M.Ball & Co. Glenferrie Road, Malvern. Overhead cash carrier. Probably went in mid to late 1960s. (Kevin Taig in Trams Down Under Archive, 26/12/05)

MELBOURNE. Dimmeys, Swan Street, Richmond. "Preserved remnants" of a wire system. (Douglas Beith). System was relocated from Balls - see above. "When I last visited the store about 3-4 years ago there were still some remnants of the overhead wire system in the eastern side - back half of the store... The cashier was on a podium in the centre - to the east side. (Kevin Taig in Trams Down Under Archive, 26/12/05)

MELBOURNE. Forges department store, 80-90 Nicholson Street, Footscray. Lamson pneumatic tube system. Some parts displayed in window when I visited, Sept. 2004: inlet and outlet of a station painted light brown, four carriers on table and two in a wire basket. Carriers numbered 23, 29 and 30 (some alterations)

MELBOURNE.. Hattam Stores, 383 Glenhuntly Road, Elsternwick. "The old Cash Railway they still have working there" Diary of an average Australian, 1/9/97.

MELBOURNE. Hoopers, Brunswick. The "Detroit Cash railway" was operating from 1908. (Footscray Advertiser, Marc 1908)

MELBOURNE. Meyers (dept store) 314-336 Bourke Street. Pneumatic tube system. Many tubes remaining in the basement ceiling - about 30 in parallel in one corner - when I visited in Sept. 2004.. Also prominent in level 2 ceiling - some cut off. No stations visible.
"The Lamson pneumatic tube cash conveying system was installed in the store in 1914 with the dispatch station in the basement and cash terminal stations on other floors fed by concealed tubing in the walls... The system at Myer consists of a series of embossed ornate chambers and shoots, with chrome-plated cast brass, leather valves, push rods and balancing gear. The system is largely intact, though steel tubing which originally connected to the store's various departments has been cut off at ceiling level. A secondary cash station is still extant in a storage area at the northern end of the fifth floor of the Bourke Street store. This ornate pneumatic tube system is extremely rare and is the only known example of its type to survive in situ in Victoria. Victorian Heritage Register: No. PROV H2100 (17 Mar. 2006)

MELBOURNE. Ryan's Filters (auto-parts shop), Elizabeth Street. "The [cashier's] desk was connected to the serving counters by a web of steel wire like spokes on a wheel... The receipt and cash was tucked in what appeared to be peanut butter jars, which were screwed into lids, suspended from the wires." (Posting to alt.folklore.urban newsgroup, 1/5/01)

MOUNT MORGAN, Qld. James Stewart & Co. Pty. Ltd. (dept. store). Cash railway introduced in 1897. Ledger entry for 2 August shows that cost was 225 pounds plus installation. Building and railway extended in 1904. Business continued to 1929. Building is now town museum and has a piece of a wire system which may have belonged to the store. (R.Macfarlane)

PERTH, WA Weidenbach & Co. (drapers). "By agreement dated August 19, 1902, the appellents, a foreign corporation, leased to Weidenbach & Co., a firm of drapers in Perth, a patent cash railway." Australian Digest (Privy Council, Judicial Committee, 1987?) p.42

QUEENSCLIFFE, Vict. Eddie George department store, Hesse Street. Wire system in 1980s.

QUORN, SA. Fosters Welcome Mart, aka The Great Northern Emporium, 45 First Street. "This store still has the original flying fox docket and money transport system... You will always be welcome to come in and have a look at this piece of history." Flinders Ranges Council website. Also Quorndon Magazine, Summer 2002. Closed 30 July 2004. Some photographs at ABC website.

ROCKHAMPTON, Qld. James Stewart & Co. Pty. Ltd. dept. store. Cash railway installed by about 1895. New building and extension to system added in 1898 - newspaper reports on 9 and 10 Dec. New building in 1928 with Lamson pneumatic tube system. 13 or 14 stations in 1950s. One station still in situ and working and other pipework visible. Terminals were "extremely elaborate with highly scrolled brass bodies - a work of art". (R. Macfarlane)

ROMA, Qld. Ace Drapers, 86 McDowell Street. "Formerly Hunter's Emporium, selling furniture, general drapery, clothing, ironmongery, groceries and other provisions... The current building was constructed in 1916 after a fire... The new emporium had electric light, a cash railway, and everything needed to make it 'thoroughly modern'. Aussie Heritage website

SALE, Vict. William Leslie, Foster Street. "In 1888 Leslie commenced business for himself as a general draper in Foster Street, Sale... with sales transactions being sped on overhead wires to the centrally located cashier." Australian Dictionary of Biography

SHEFFIELD, Tas. Slater's Country Store. Flying fox system. Store founded in 1899. Sheffield website claims it is one of only six left in Australia. "The Slater's store is a wonderful example of how a store was set up earlier last century. The flying-fox money receptacle is still functioning although Grannie Slater retired when she was 93. She did all the money transactions from 4 counters while perched up in her loft attending to the flying-foxes." Australian IFFR website

SWAN HILL, Vict. Wire system seen in action "fairly recently" Devonport Times, Jan. 2002

SYDNEY. Dymocks bookshop, George Street. "At this time Dymock's had a pneumatic air system. Each section had access to the air tubes and when a sale was made a docket was written out and this together with the money was put into the tube which was delivered upstairs to accounts. Any change was put into the tubes by the accounts section and returned to the sales floor. This system was abolished shortly after I arrived and each section was given a cash register." [He started in December 1966.] Collecting books and magazines website

SYDNEY. Mark Foys. Pneumatic tube system until 1965. (Pollon)

SYDNEY. Hendersons fabric shop, ?Pitt Street. Pneumatic tube system in use in late 1960s. Posting to Aus-NSW-Sydney-List, 29 Mar. 2002

SYDNEY. George Hodgson Jnr & Co, Ashfield. Cash ball system installed in October 1889. "At this period there were only two firms in the colony, beside Messrs Hodgson's who had adopted it... The railway .. commenced in the ironmongery department; travelled round to the grocery, the general drapery, millinery, men's clothing, and each department of the business... We ought, indeed, to be proud of a firm who would evince such energy as Messrs Hodgson are doing by the adoption of an improvement which is even now looked on as a marvel by the merchants of the largest cities of America and Europe." Ashfield Advertiser, 2 Nov. 1889

SYDNEY. Anthony Hordern. "The first [Sydney?] retailer to try 'the tube system' in 1910". (Pollon)

SYDNEY. Joseph Farmer & Co. (later Grace Brothers), Broadway. "Mother would seat herself on an Austrian cane chair in front of the handkerchief counter... The sale completed, a docket for 'two and thrippence' would be made out and mother would hand over a halfcrown piece .. whereupon the sales-girl would enclose the coin and docket in a container on a wire stretching from the handkerchief counter to a cashier in an elevated box in the centre of the floor. The container would then be catapulted, like a miniature flying-fox, to the cashier who would, by the same method, return the docket with the thrippence change." The memoirs of James Russel Shorter
Photograph of Grace Brothers by Sam Hood in September 1939 shows cashier and cash desk with about six wire propulsions and eight pneumatic tube terminals. State Library of New South Wales, Home and Away 19928

SYDNEY. David Jones. "I remember .. watching my hard earned pocket money disappearing into the gloom to some mysterious inner sanctum." (Di Wall in posting to alt.fifty-plus.friends group, 16/4/03)

SYDNEY. Loneragans dept store. Lamson pneumatic tube system in use in 1930s."Tags/notches on the capsule identified the sending sales desk and the receiving ststion - in this case the cashier's ststion.". Posting to Aus-NSW-Sydney-List, 30 Mar. 2002

SYDNEY. Powerhouse Museum. Display of a piece of track, receiving basket, three cash balls (one marked "4 PRODUCE" and photographs of systems at Up-to-Date store, Coolamon and Huthwaites, Wagga Wagga. Seen September 2004 - may be temporary.

SYDNEY. State Stores, Redfern Hill. Photo of "Manchester Department" with cash ball system in Pollon.

SYDNEY. Sydney Civil Service Store. Pneumatic tube system. Photo (not very clear) of "where the pneumatic tubes centre (cash tubes collect to here)". Sydney Mail 16 Sep. 1903, pp.762-3 .

TINGHA, NSW near Armidale. Wing Hing Long shop, 10 Ruby Street . Store dates from 1880s and served as a general provisions store, initially for the Chinese tin miners. Acquired by Guyra Shire in 1998 and now a museum. (Newsbrief / Museums & Galleries Foundation of NSW, vol. 2, issue 2 (Apr. 2000) p.1.) Photograph showing "one of the cashier's pulleys" at Australian Museums & Galleries Online

WAGGA WAGGA, NSW. Huthwaite general store. Cash-ball system. (Photograph at Up-to-Date Store, Coolamon)

WINTON, Qld. Corfield & Fitzmaurice, 63 Elderslie Street. "The Corfield and Fitzmaurice store is rare for the intactness of its interior space complete with many fittings such as shelves, display cabinets and counters for a traditional range of merchandise organised into departments. In particular the cash railway, or flying fox dispenser, is a rare example in situ of money handling technology of the early twentieth century... The current 1916 building is the latest in a succession of Corfield and Fitzmaurice stores on the same site which established the main street of Winton... A cash railway, known as a 'flying fox', for transporting cash and receipts between the counter and a central timber office raised to mezzanine level still survives." Queensland Environmental Protection Agency website.
Store closed in 1987 and reopened by community group in 1994. Queensland Holidays website

YOUNG, NSW. General store founded by Samuel Millard. "Their overhead cash railway is in daily use". D.Tattenham in This England, Summer 1975

Museums

BOONAH, Qld. Templin Historical Village. Cash carrier.

CHARTERS TOWERS, Qld. National Trust shop at Zara Clark Museum. From Pollards store - see above. Some carriages are replicas from Vivian Rush Specialty Engineering.

LOCKHART, NSW. Museum. Cash-ball system, not in situ. (Up-to-Date Store, Coolamon and Miles Lewis, Australian building)

MELBOURNE, Vict. Museum of Victoria, Carlton. "Set consists of a Shanghai mechanism, a return trigger mechanism, a trolley with a cash cup, mounting brackets, cable and a turnbuckle... Made by Lamson Engineering Co., Box Hill, Victoria." Australian Museums & Galleries Online website. Not on display when I visited in Sep. 2004.

MOUNT MORGAN, Qld. See above.

SINGLETON., NSW. Singleton Historical Museum, Burdekin Park, New England Highway. Cash Ball system originally installed in Gearys Store, 1913. Australian Museums & Galleries website

TINGHA, NSW. See above.

UNLEY, SA. Unley Museum, 80 Edmund Avenue. "Visit the Unley Museum's latest exhibition Shop 'Til You Drop... Kids can use the replica overhead cash carrier ('flying fox')". Unley website . The system was made by Viv Rush. Exhibition ended and system removed in June 2008.

indicates systems which are still there (as far as I know) though they may not be working.