Banknotes of the Australian dollar

The banknotes of the Australian dollar were first issued by the Reserve Bank of Australia on 14 February 1966, when Australia adopted decimal currency. The $5 note was not issued until May 1967.

The $1 (10/-), $2 (£1), $10 (£5), and $20 (£10) had exact exchange rates with pounds and were a similar colour to the notes they replaced, but the $5 (£2/10) did not, and so was introduced after the public had become familiar with decimal currency. Notes issued between 1966 and 1973 bore the title "Commonwealth of Australia". Starting from 1974, the title on the new notes only read "Australia" and the legal tender phrase was also changed from "Legal Tender throughout the Commonwealth of Australia and the territories of the Commonwealth" to "This Australian Note is legal tender throughout Australia and its territories". The $50 note was introduced in 1973 and the $100 note in 1984, in response to inflation requiring larger denominations for transactions. The one dollar note was replaced by a coin in 1984, while the two dollar note was replaced by a smaller coin in 1988. These original bank notes were designed by Gordon Andrews, who rejected tradional Australian cliques for in favour for interesting and familiar subjects such as Aboriginal culture, women, the environment, architecture and aeronautics. Although no longer printed, all previous issues of Australian dollar banknotes are considered legal tender.

In 1988, the Reserve Bank of Australia issued plastic, specifically polypropylene polymer banknotes (which were produced by Note Printing Australia), to commemorate the bicentenary of European settlement in Australia. These notes contained a transparent "window" with a diffractive optically variable device (DOVD) image of Captain James Cook as a security feature. Australian banknotes were the first in the world to use such features. All current Australian banknotes also contain Microprinting for further security.

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