AMP Across Australia

AMP opened its first office in Sydney in 1849, but it was not long before it became a truly national enterprise, with offices and agents across Australia, both in major cities and smaller regional centres. 

AMP in New South Wales 

Sydney was the birthplace of AMP, with the Society’s first office in rented premises above a grocer’s shop at 470 George Street. Rapid expansion meant the Society operated from a variety of buildings in the Sydney CBD, including an office at 60 Pitt Street between 1864-1878, before the decision was made to build an ornate new office at 87 Pitt Street. This building was the long-term head office of AMP, designed by architects Mansfield Brothers and completed in 1878. In 1909 this building was substantially remodelled in the early 1900s. The design by architect Ernest Scott extended the building to six storeys. It was officially opened on 21 January 1913. Even more extensions were planned and completed throughout the early 1900s. 

By the 1950s it was clear that AMP could not comfortably house its staff by merely continuing to expand its Pitt Street building and in 1956 it acquired a building at Circular Quay, the former Mort & Co Building, with a view to demolishing the existing building and undertaking a landmark new project to build Australia's first skyscraper. In 1962 this new 26 storey building, the iconic Sydney Cove Building, opened. This was followed by the neighbouring AMP Centre in Bridge Street, which opened in 1976. AMP’s current Sydney Office, Quay Quarter Tower, is located on the site of the redeveloped AMP Centre. 

Aside from being home to its head office for the last 175 years, New South Wales has been home to branches of the Society right across the state, particularly after the Society made a more concerted effort to decentralise its operations from Sydney and establish local offices with local knowledge. Locations included Newcastle, Wollongong, Albury, Wagga Wagga, Tamworth, Goulburn, Lismore, Griffith, Armidale, Grafton, Bathurst, Maitland, Dubbo and many more. 

Newcastle had an agent in Newcastle from its establishment in 1849, with the Clerk of Petty Sessions, Mr A.W. Hutchinson, acting as an agent in the district, which actually covered the coastal area from the Central Coast to Port Macquarie. Business had grown to such an extent that in the 1890s the Society appointed Miss May Harris as a medical referee, Mr Lock as District Agent and Mr E. Walker Cooper as District Manager. The Newcastle Office was in Watt Street near the railway station and wharves. By 1927, the Society had outgrown this office, and they built a new premises in Hunter Street, described as “one of the handsomest to be found in any part of the country”. Apart from its insurance business, AMP has had a variety of interests across the Newcastle region, including investing in the Garden City Shopping Centre (later Westfield Kotara) and the Tomago Aluminium Smelter.   

In 1881 AMP opened a district office in Bathurst on William Street opposite the Town Hall. The Bathurst Office covered the wider goldfields region including Hill End, Sofala, and Lucknow. Bathurst’s principal agent from the 1890s was Mr Charles Barker, a local identity that was so well-known and respected that the office was often simply referred to as ‘Barker’s Office’. Following his sudden death in 1912, his son Mr C.N. Barker took over his father’s role, and was the local agent for 41 years, meaning father and son had represented AMP in Bathurst for an extraordinary 73 years.

In 1905 AMP opened its first office in Lismore to cater for the “rapidly developing centre” and expand into the Northern Rivers District. In 1955 a fire seriously damaged the building and destroyed most of the office’s records. So dedicated were the staff that they still reopened the office the next morning at 9am. Reportedly, a staff member was writing a receipt for collection of a premium while firefighters were still hosing smouldering sections of the building. In a cruel twist, builders had just stripped away the burnt roof and ceiling when a deluge of 12 inches of rain fell over Lismore in a weekend, further damaging the building. AMP spent $30,000 restoring the building and staff kept the business open during the extensive repairs. A new office was opened in 1967.  

AMP in Victoria

From the mid-1800s Melbourne saw an influx of British life offices including the Northern Assurance Company, European Assurance Society, Unity Fire and Life, and the Queen Insurance Company. Yet AMP was slow to act. In July 1863, 25 policyholders signed a petition to establish a full AMP branch in Melbourne and finally a local board of five directors was appointed, with their first meeting held on 26 September 1863. At the same time AMP opened its first office in Melbourne, leasing space at 450 Collins Street for £65 per year.

After a more concerted expansion into Victoria, AMP was doing good business with offices opened in Geelong, Ballarat, Bendigo, Maryborough and Sale. The Ballarat Office was particularly strong. Ballarat had been represented by two local agents, both pioneers of the district, Mr Oddie and Mr Shoppee, and an office was opened on Lydiard Street in 1883. By the 1920s Ballarat had over 11,000 policies on its books. In 1964 AMP opened a second office on Lydiard Street, this time in a purpose-built five storey building, the tallest building in Ballarat at the time. 

Despite the success in the regions, AMP's business was initially stifled in Melbourne, where the Sydney-based directors kept a tight rein on operations. The Victorian Board urged the Sydney directors to allow them to be more competitive by employing field agents and brokers rather than trying to do all its business from the Collins Street office and paying these agents and brokers commissions, but AMP’s new Sydney-based secretary Alexander Ralston quashed this idea.

Throughout the late 1860s AMP’s Victorian Board slowly but surely gained more independence and was eventually permitted to lend against mortgages and land across Melbourne and Ballarat. AMP began to thrive in the south, aided by the steady guidance of Thomas a’Beckett and Martin Howy Irving. Irving had a strong background in education, was a champion sportsman, and pillar of the local Catholic Church. He was appointed chairman of AMP’s Victorian Board, and together he and a’Beckett were at AMP for 40 years.

In the 1930s AMP’s new building at 425 Collins Street accommodated almost 300 staff, but by the mid-1960s this had ballooned to 843 staff and the Society became acutely aware of the need for new premises. In 1963 AMP purchased a 2-acre site on the corner of Church & Bourke Streets from the Church of England trust Corporation for approximately $3 million, and in 1966 the buildings on the site were demolished for the construction of AMP Square, which would be Melbourne’s tallest building. AMP Square was a joint design project between the San Francisco architectural firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and Melbourne architects and engineers Bates, Smart & McCutcheon.

AMP Square opened on 17 November 1969. The building was very progressive for its time, with 40% of the site dedicated to open space. The building required the largest contract for commercial carpeting (other than hotels) of any building in the Southern Hemisphere. It also had the largest number of lifts in Victoria, with 20 lifts transporting passengers at 1,000 feet per minute. While natural light was ample, the building also included 23,700 fluorescent lights. 11,000 telephone connection points were installed in the main tower. AMP commissioned three large artworks for the building – ‘Awakening’ a 10-tonne steel sculpture by Clement Meadmore; an unnamed stainless-steel sculpture by Michael Young; and a 20 x 7-foot tapestry by Helena Hernmarck. For the public, AMP Square offered 20 shops at plaza level. For staff, the building offered a 290-seat dining room, an 80-seat senior dining room, a 248-seat theatrette, gymnasium, squash court, table tennis room, billiards room, and reading rooms. 

AMP in Queensland

AMP established its business in Queensland in 1875, opening an office in rented premises on the corner of Queen & Creek Streets in Brisbane.

Two years later, AMP opened its own office on the corner of Queen & Edward Streets, the first of three buildings AMP would erect on this site. The best known of these is MacArthur Chambers, which was constructed in the early 1930s. Originally known simply as the AMP Building, construction of this purpose-built office commenced in 1931. Designed by Brisbane architects Francis Richard Hall and Harold Morion Cook, the building was finally officially opened on 2 March 1934 by Queensland Governor Sir Leslie Orme Wilson. The bottom nine floors of this grand building were occupied by AMP and included staff offices, boardroom, banking chamber and luncheon room. The remaining floors were leased to commercial tenants. In 1942 the building was largely subject to compulsory evacuation under military orders for use as the headquarters of the Allied Forces in the South-West Pacific, led by General Douglas MacArthur. Only the basement and a section of the ground floor were kept for use by AMP. It wasn’t until June 1945 that AMP and its tenants were permitted to reoccupy the entire building.  

Having outgrown the MacArthur Chambers Building, in 1977 AMP opened its new $25 million building on a large Brisbane CBD block bounded by Eagle, Mary, Market & Charlotte Streets. At 41 storeys, it was Brisbane’s tallest building at the time. The new building included 6,000 individual panes of gold-tinted glass, 13 high-speed lifts, a fountain, and an area “for diners to sip their tea and coffee under beach umbrellas in an open-air Parisian-type setting beside it”.

In addition to Brisbane, AMP has had a presence across regional Queensland since the 1870s, with offices in towns including Rockhampton, Cairns and Bundaberg.

AMP in Tasmania

AMP engaged a local agent named William Knight in Hobart as early as 1855, and in 1877 a local board was established with its first meeting held in a temporary office at 81 Macquarie Street. At this meeting, AMP’s actuary Morrice Black informed the five men present that “the sum of £208 per annum had been voted by the directors to be divided as fees amongst the local directors – the fees to be distributed weekly - £4.0.0 to be placed on the table at each meeting and after the reading of the minutes to be distributed rateably amongst the directors present”. 

In 1880 AMP acquired land on the corner of Elizabeth & Collins Streets and constructed a new building to house their office. This new office opened in 1884 and was extended in 1912 and again in 1918.

AMP opened offices in Beaconsfield, Waratah, Ross, Deloraine, Longford, Cressy, and Zeehan, but most of these closed once district offices opened in Launceston (1881), Devonport (1893) and Zeehan (1896).

By 1905, the Hobart Mercury reported that AMP had over 60% of the total insurance business in Tasmania. The same year, AMP established its Industrial Department, and the Hobart agency appointed its first female employees - typist and stenographer Agnes Blyth and clerk Madeline Packer. 

AMP in Western Australia

AMP opened its first Western Australian office in Albany in 1872. This was followed two years later by a Perth office, located in Elder House on the corner of St George’s Terrace and William Street. The first agents appointed to work out of the Perth office were George Randell and Elias Solomon. They issued the branch’s first policy to Septimus Burt Q.C., who was a director on AMP’s Western Australian Board and the state’s attorney general.

In 1887 AMP moved into its own purpose-built building in Perth at 103 St George’s Terrace.

After AMP opened its Industrial Department in 1905, the Western Australian Branch gained its first female employees, Grace Barritt and Lillah Long.

In 1911, AMP purchased the site of its first office on the corner of St George’s Terrace and William Street for £25,000 and opened a new office in 1915.

In 1924 the Western Australian Office passed a milestone, issuing policies worth £1 million in one year for the first time in its history. Business continued to grow throughout the early 1900s and by 1959 AMP appointed a country supervisor in Western Australia to oversee the agents working throughout the vast areas of the state.  

In 1966 the Western Australian Office issued policies worth $50 million in one year, and by 1974, this figure was $200 million.    

AMP in South Australia

AMP opened its first office in South Australia in temporary premises at 37 King William Street in the Adelaide CBD on 16 October 1872. It took only a few weeks for the Society's Adelaide Office to receive a substantial number of enquiries from potential policyholders. By the end of its first year in South Australia, AMP had issued 760 policies, but a decade later this had grown to 6,591 policies worth £2,157,461, with an annual revenue of £71,680. 

Resident Secretary Joseph Herring wasted no time in travelling to the country districts of South Australia in the 1870s to engage local representatives for the Society. 

AMP soon established an office at 91 King William Street before acquiring the Gresham Chambers building at 21 King William Street and erecting a permanent building which was occupied by both AMP and its tenants.

District offices were opened in locations including Mount Gambier (1884), Clare (1887), Port Pirie (1900) and Kadina (1920).  

In 1922 AMP hosted a celebratory jubilee picnic at Belair for its South Australian staff, attended by many of the Society's directors from Sydney and around 250 staff. The day included a full programme of sports events including a ladies' potato and spoon race, mixed whistling race, a three-legged race and a tug-of-war.