An elderly Denmark man paid the airfares for his niece and her husband to come to WA from England so he could move his life savings from Bank West to the Commonwealth Bank.

The couple’s airfares cost Kevin Doherty, 87, $6100 for the niece to help him with drawing up his will as well as the bank transfers for term deposits because he is unable to do online banking.

The short and occasional opening hours at the Commonwealth Bank branch in Denmark have flummoxed Mr Doherty making it difficult for him to get in-person assistance. He has lived in Denmark for 37 years and lives with myasthenia gravis, a disease of weak muscles caused by a break down of communication between the nerves and muscles.

He has worked in construction starting in the 1960s in the Snowy Mountains Scheme, Queensland and the North West and as a rouseabout in shearing sheds.

Mr Doherty assists a woman in her seventies who lives with a handicap and is also moving her money from the closed Bank West branch to what is now the Commonwealth branch in Denmark. 

‘Come back next week’

After starting the process in November last year, the process was completed in February.

“In that period, I would go into the bank here and ask ‘how’s it going’ and get ‘oh, the lady who’s dealing with that isn’t working here today. She’s working somewhere else’,” Mr Hinds said.

“They (staff) won’t contact that person (in the meantime).

“One time, on a Monday, I got told ‘come back Wednesday of next week’ to get an answer.

“Those people, they’re not trained staff so they get things wrong.”

Mr Hinds found two bank staff had asked him to sign the wrong forms to set up a term deposit account so he was called back to close that account and to establish another. 

This article appeared in the Denmark Bulletin, 20 March 2025.
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