Australian Dictionary of Biography

John (Jack) Callachor Fletcher (1906–1998), banker and public servant, was born on 9 June 1906 in Sydney, elder son of New South Wales-born parents Augustus John Fletcher, general labourer, and his wife Margaret Ann, née Callachor. Jack was the nephew of Ellen Webster who, with Catherine Green, became one of the first female members of the New South Wales Legislative Council in 1931. When Ellen died in 1965, she left most of her substantial estate to Fletcher. Educated by the Christian Brothers at St Mary’s Cathedral College, he sang in the cathedral choir and learned the piano.

In 1922 Fletcher’s career began with appointment as a junior clerk in the rural industries branch of the State Department of Agriculture. At St Brigid’s Catholic Church, Coogee, on 8 November 1930 he married Eugenie Rose Fahy, a typist. When the Farmers’ Relief Act (1932) established the Farmers’ Relief Board to manage the provision of short-term finance to farmers in distress, he was appointed a member. He also joined its successor, the Rural Reconstruction Board, formed under the Rural Reconstruction Act (1939), and became its secretary (1948–50). This experience would later serve him well in understanding the needs of farmers during the drought of the mid-1960s. In 1935 he had joined the State-owned Rural Bank of New South Wales. He worked his way up the organisation, being appointed to the bank’s board in 1950 and serving as deputy president in periods from 1958 when the president, (Sir) Roy McKerihan, was absent, before finally attaining the position of president in May 1961, his appointment being decided by cabinet.

The Rural Bank had been formed in 1932 from the ashes of the troubled Government Savings Bank of New South Wales specifically to support primary industries, but this was broadened to general banking in 1947 when it merged with the Advances for Homes Department and the Personal Loans Department. During his tenure as its president, the bank rapidly expanded its presence in many towns and began serving their residents as well as the agricultural sector. He, nonetheless, was also aware of the growth of suburban manufacturing centres and the need to provide banking services to newly settled residents in these areas. In December 1961, for example, he announced a new branch at Cabramatta in south-west Sydney, taking pride in the building’s ‘modern banking architecture’ (Biz 1961, 5) and the support the bank was providing to new residents in establishing homes.

Fletcher attended many such branch openings, and appears to have been imbued with a strong sense of civic pride and duty to assist the progress of local communities. His work beyond the Rural Bank bears out this image. In particular, his experiences after his daughter contracted polio in 1951—including visiting her in hospital nearly every day for almost two years—led him to co-found the Poliomyelitis Society of Australia and to campaign for longer hospital visiting hours. Among his many roles at various times were chairman of the board of the Eastern Suburbs Hospital, president of the Poliomyelitis Society, fellow of the Royal Commonwealth Society, chairman of the New South Wales State committee of the Water Research Foundation of Australia, and chairman of the Totalizator Agency Board. He was also a member of the Royal Agricultural Society, the Sydney Chamber of Commerce, the Royal Exchange, the Institute of International Affairs, and the Builders Licensing Board. Beyond these duties he also enjoyed bowling and was president of the Coogee Bowling Club.

Appointed CBE in 1963, Fletcher led the Chamber of Commerce section of a major New South Wales trade and investment mission to the United States of America and Canada in 1967. An obituary described him as ‘immensely popular’ (Sydney Morning Herald 1998, 31) with staff, and the term ‘Uncle Jack’ attached to contemporary photographs suggests a sense of paternalism. Under his leadership the bank championed the cause of young female farmers and encouraged Indigenous Australian students, which speaks to his social and community values. He retired in 1971, having played a prominent role in rural finance and agricultural development in New South Wales for half a century. Survived by two sons, Francis and Gerald, and one daughter, Therese (Terry), he died on 21 March 1998 at Randwick, and was buried in the local cemetery; his wife had predeceased him and one son, John, had died at the age of five in 1942. He was described in one obituary as a ‘forceful’ man ‘with a sense of social justice,’ whose ‘sense of fairness and generosity permeated his life’ (Sydney Morning Herald 1998, 31). One of his sons, Frank, became a Catholic priest and helped to found the Aboriginal Catholic Ministry in the archdiocese of Sydney.