10 Pounds Bank of Australasia

The Bank of Australasia was a British imperial institution chartered in London in 1835, operating branches across the Australian colonies and New Zealand with its affairs managed entirely from home. Notes of this denomination would have circulated in an economy still running on a chaotic mix of colonial, British, and private bank paper — there was no single Australian currency until Federation in 1901, and no central bank until 1911.

Perkins, Bacon & Petch were the dominant security printers of the Victorian era, responsible for the Penny Black and the majority of early Commonwealth postage stamps. Their intaglio work on colonial banknotes is among the finest produced anywhere in the nineteenth century. A £10 note in this period represented serious money — roughly two months' wages for a skilled worker.