Reserve Bank reveals new design for Australia’s $10 note
Feb 17, 2017 under Australia 90 , Business/Economy 516 , Interesting 143
OUR new look $10 note is here, guys, but you’d be forgiven for not knowing who is on it, even if you’ve been looking at her the whole time.
On Friday, the Reserve Bank pushed out its specimen for the new $10 note, one that includes Banjo Paterson and Dame Mary Gilmore. Paterson is familiar to most Australians, but Dame Gilmore? Not so much.
It turns out she’s been staring back at you from the inside of your wallet or purse for years. The new tenner shows the same people depicted on the old tenner, but it kinda looks like Dame Gilmore had a makeover. Does her nose look different to anybody else?
Dame Gilmore was a poet and journalist born in 1865. She grew up in the NSW rural hub of Wagga and later moved to Sydney where she served as a school teacher.
She deserves her place on the $10 note because she’s more Australian than you. She’s so Australian that after traveling to Paraguay in 1896 she established a communal settlement and called it New Australia. There she edited the daily journal, Cosme Evening Notes.
Her face has adorned an Australia Post stamp and the Canberra suburb of Gilmore was named after her.
New currency evokes a dramatic response from Aussies. When the new $5 note was revealed in April last year, Australia lost its collective mind.
Some commenters suggested the fiver “looks like vomit” while others pondered, simply: “What even is that?”
There are important questions about the new $10 note too, such as: “Why does it look like a travel brochure from the Gold Coast from 1993?”
Or, “Why does it have pollen on it?” To taunt the hay fever sufferers among us, obviously.
Governor Philip Lowe said it was important to keep familiar faces on the banknote and that Paterson and Gilmore deserved their place inside Australia’s wallets.
“Their work is recognised in several design elements on the banknote, including images of a pen nib in two of the clear windows and excerpts of their poetry in microprint.”
There’s some wildlife too, for those who are interested in that sort of thing.
“Each banknote in the new series will feature a different species of native Australian wattle and bird. The $10 banknote features the Bramble Wattle (Acacia victoriae) and the Sulphur-crested Cockatoo (Cacatua galerita),” Mr Lowe said.
The new notes won’t be issued until September, so don’t throw your old ones out just yet.
Tagged: Australia 109, money 7, Reserve Bank 2
