1 Pound Bank of Australasia

The Bank of Australasia was a British imperial institution chartered in London in 1835, operating branches across the Australian colonies under direct oversight from Threadneedle Street. Its notes were accordingly produced in London and shipped out — the colonial branches functioned as agencies, not autonomous issuing banks in any local sense. Charles Skipper & East were the house printer for several British-chartered colonial banks during this period, handling security work that the colonies had no domestic capacity to produce.

1850 places this note squarely in the pre-gold-rush economy of the Australian colonies, before the 1851 Ballarat and Bendigo finds transformed liquidity conditions almost overnight.