History

The Pacific Oil Company Pty Ltd of  517-519 Collins St Melbourne was established in May 1930 by a group of  businessmen including George Shepherd, earlier employed by the Shell Company ( Aust) and Bernard Cowen, previously a commercial traveller & father of Sir Zelman Cowen, former Governor General of Australia.
Dan Bardin who was previously director & Melbourne branch manager of General Motors ( Aust ) soon joined the executive team as Managing Director.

Their PAX ( pax- the Roman goddess of peace ) motor spirit was proudly marketed as independently "Australian Owned & Controlled" and their familiar black & white striped pumps which were scattered on the main highways of  service stations in Victoria & Southern NSW provided "Gold PAX" & "Super PAX Ethyl" to passing motorists. The Pacific Oil Company were the first independant oil company to be registered in Victoria & were  distributors of the American  Pennzoil lubricants as well as their own PAXOL brand of motor oils. Some locations PAX was available included the Trevaskis Brothers Garage in Shepparton VIC, Henty Motor Garage, Henty NSW & the Regent Service Station, Albury NSW where in Sept 1936 the proprietor installed four new pumps incl one PAX petrol. 

Little is known how they sourced motor spirit in the early days however, in July 1932 they purchased an Italian oil tanker vessel for £4800, built in 1908 & registered as the "VINCAS" & was of approximately 7150 tons deadweight. In November 1932 with the assistance of the companies shipping agent Arthur Perry, it carried a cargo of 2,000,000 gallons of high grade American petroleum spirit & moored at Westernport Victoria where it was unloaded into drums for distribution, considering themselves as "Pioneers of Low-Cost Handling". The ship then became the Pacific Oil Companies storage depot until they could secure a plot of land just under an acre in size at Morradoo near Crib Point VIC which they leased from the Lands Department to establish a storage facility for their motor oil & spirit. However they soon outgrew this location & relocated to the much larger Newport VIC terminal alongside the Alba Petroleum Company.

The company expanded steadily varying their motor spirit price to be competitive however, due to the depression of the 1930's they struggled to endure in a difficult market, the discerning motorist was now bypassing the more expensive first grade fuel for second grade, however PAX did not have second grade fuel in the offering, and as profits declined   along with so many other companies they found the competition closing in.
In October 1935 with an ongoing price war on petroleum, they merged with the Alba Petroleum Company of Australia Pty Ltd & continued as a subsidiary trading under the Pacific Oil name until August 1941.