It's a Thursday morning outside the office of Catholic Care Northern Territory in Tennant Creek, an unassuming building just off the main highway that splits the town in two.
For many of the financial assistance charity's clients, it's payday. That means there is a steady stream of people coming in to ask for help to access their online banking or reset their pin numbers so they can go to one of the only remaining ATMs in town and withdraw cash.
When asked what they are coming in to get help with, everyone gives the same one-word answer, "Westpac".
It has been over two years since Australia's second-largest bank closed its branch and pulled out of the town of Tennant Creek with less than 24 hours notice. Support workers like regional manager Marcella Rankine were left scrambling.
"There was no notice. We just got a Westpac worker come in and say we were closing and that was it and it was closed the very next day," Rankine says.
"The community was lost and confused about where to get their Westpac money from, so we stepped in and provided the service, but the impact was huge. We had to stop delivering other services."
Many shops in the main street of Tennant Creek are boarded up.
A regional hub left in the lurch
Tennant Creek is a hot and remote town, 500kms north of Alice Springs on the long stretch of the Stuart Highway to Darwin. It was once bustling due to the extensive mining operations, and at one point was one of the biggest gold producing regions in Australia. Now, more than half the shopfronts on the main street are boarded up.
On the outskirts of town, the Battery Hill Gold Mining and Heritage Centre displays relics of the town's former glory days, such as old mining tools, alongside black and white photos of men working among the rocks and dirt. There is almost no mention of the fact that, for thousands of years, this has been Warumunga country.
People come into town here from all across the region to access services. The Westpac closure has had a major ripple effect
The town is home to 3000 people, more than half of whom are Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander, and it is the main regional hub for the wider 320,000km2 Barkly region, an area bigger than New Zealand.
People come into town here from all across the region to access services. The Westpac closure has had a major ripple effect. There's now just one bank branch left in Tennant Creek – ANZ – and it opens for just four hours a day, Monday to Friday.
CHOICE investigative reporter Jarni Blakkarly visited Tennant Creek to file this report.
When the Westpac branch pulled out of town, Catholic Care lodged a complaint with the Banking Code Compliance Committee, a committee of just three people supposed to ensure banks comply with the voluntary industry Code of Practice.
It found that Westpac breached the Code with its abrupt branch closure, but the sanction issued by the committee was mild at best: Westpac was merely named in a scathing press release. The bank has faced no other consequences for leaving marginalised customers in the lurch.
Over two years on from the closure, Catholic Care still spends much of its limited resources assisting Westpac customers
"Westpac could have done at least six months' preparation to let the community know this is happening," Rankine says.
"They could have built the capacity of the community before their closure with the internet banking and the telephone stuff, but it wasn't that way, it was all lumped on us to do."
Over two years on from the closure, Catholic Care still spends much of its limited resources assisting Westpac customers. In the month of November 2024 alone, they recorded 161 Westpac clients coming in for support.
Westpac responds
Westpac says that "safety and security concerns" in Tennant Creek meant they needed to close the branch outside standard process in order to "protect our people".
"These circumstances were specific to the Tennant Creek branch and included damage to our branch and ATM. Customers were notified via SMS and informed of alternative banking options. We recognise more could've been done to fully support our customers, and we have reviewed and strengthened our branch closure protocols as a result," a spokesperson says.
Westpac did not respond to our questions about whether the bank, which posted a $7 billion profit in 2024, would consider providing financial support to charity organisations doing the work of assisting their customers. The spokesperson says they continue to provide services to Tennant Creek through engagement team visits, including one as recently as February 2025.
Marcella Rankine from Catholic Care NT.
Importance of cash
Westpac's closure in Tennant Creek was a case study in how a regional bank branch shouldn't treat its customers. But it was also just another example of a nationwide problem that's only getting worse.
As more and more regional and remote bank branches close, residents in these towns and the surrounding communities are having trouble accessing cash. For many, it's still their primary form of payment. First Nations advocates say their communities in particular are reliant on cash, which remains the preferred way of doing business.
For many elderly First Nations customers, cash is the only way they have ever known, and financial counsellors say forcing people to move to internet banking is excluding them from vital services, as well as exposing them to potential financial abuse.
"For our mob here, they lose their key cards a lot, some of them forget their pin numbers, so to have cash for First Nations is very important," Rankine says. "It's easy for them to track their money… it's really important for our mob to get their cash out so they have it."
Tennant Creek is home to 3000 people but is a hub for the wider region.
Helping out the community
Hans, a man in his forties, pulls up to the Catholic Care office in a beat-up ute. Marvin, an elderly man who speaks little English sits alongside him. He has come from a remote community further north. He doesn't have a bank card or remember his online banking password and Hans is helping him get his money out of the bank.
Marvin goes into the office and, with the help of Catholic Care staff, his money is transferred into Hans's account so they can then go to the ATM on the main street and withdraw it before heading to the IGA to buy food.
Hans explains to me that he has to transfer his own money into another account so it doesn't get mixed up with the money being transferred in by Marvin.
They transfer their money to another family member's account ... It leaves it open to misuse and people stealing their money
Catholic Care's Marcella Rankine
"I can do this online stuff but for a lot of the mob from out country it's a struggle," he says.
"From the whitefella perspective they think electronic is the way, but it ain't so easy out here," he adds. While Hans helpfully assists Marvin, Rankine says the situation of older people needing to transfer money to younger people puts them in a potentially vulnerable situation.
"They transfer their money to another family member's account, which sometimes gets lost in that transaction and the old people don't get their money. That's one thing that happens, we have noticed. It leaves it open to misuse and people stealing their money," she says.
Tyranny of distance
At Barkly Regional Arts across town, a group of elderly women sit around a big table or on mats on the floor, painting works of art. For Mary James, who comes almost every day, it is a therapeutic practice she has enjoyed for years, and it also earns her a little money.
The 64-year-old former Westpac customer says, for over a year after the bank closed, she would do a 10-hour round trip on a Greyhound bus to Alice Springs on an almost weekly basis to get to the nearest branch just to do her banking.
"I don't trust online banking, because there are so many scammers online in this day and age," she says. She has since reluctantly changed banks and closed her Westpac account.
Artist Mary James.
Boandik woman Bettina Cooper, senior financial counsellor at Mob Strong Debt Help, says that, along with the issues around trust, transferring all banking services to online or phone banking makes things more difficult for many First Nations communities around the country.
"People go into the towns and collect cash as a form of safety and to make sure that they can still pay for their essentials, because they don't always trust that the technology is going to work," she says.
The 64-year-old former Westpac customer would do a 10-hour round trip on a Greyhound bus to Alice Springs just to do her banking
She says the dwindling number of ATMs in many remote areas and problems with keeping them operational is another issue. In Tennant Creek, for example, there are just a handful of ATMs in town and CHOICE was told that they are often non-operational due to damage or running out of cash.
"When there is no ATM, or the ATM is out of cash, or when there is no bank, it often leads to people having to revert back to communal money, where they're borrowing money from family, and it places additional pressure on the larger First Nations family and community," Cooper says.
"It's not helpful to building financial independence and financial literacy."
Out-of-order ATMs are a common sight on the road to Tennant Creek.
Keeping branches open
Bunuba woman Martina Kingi from the Indigenous Consumer Assistance Network in Far North Queensland says the lack of digital access in many of the communities she works in highlights the need for in-person banking services.
"The Telstra outages, the power outages, it's pretty difficult to use any kind of digital payments or ATMs when they are down," she says.
Kingi urges the banks that are still servicing remote First Nations communities to think about their social responsibility to their customers before closing.
In February 2025, the Australian Banking Association (ABA) announced an undertaking from all of the "big four" banks that would guarantee no more remote bank branch closures until at least July 2027. While that has provided some immediate relief, there are concerns for what the future holds after that date.
CHOICE head of policy Morgan Campbell says that government intervention may be needed to make sure banks don't go cashless at certain branches or reduce hours significantly during the moratorium. He adds that ensuring customers retain 'reasonable access to cash' may require improving access to cash in areas of the country.
I don't want ANZ to close, because then we are done, we got nothing
Catholic Care's Marcella Rankine
The ABA also announced an extension of banking services at post offices in remote areas, but a range of consumer organisations say that post office staff are not properly trained or equipped to serve banking customers and while Bank@Post is better than no service at all, it is not a proper solution.
ANZ says they are committed to supporting the needs of Tennant Creek customers with everyday banking services and they refurbished their branch office in April 2024.
Rankine says she has to keep up hope that ANZ won't close here as so much of the town is now reliant on the one bank.
"I don't want ANZ to close, because then we are done, we got nothing," she says.
(All images: Jarni Blakkarly.)
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