10 Pounds Commercial Bank of Australia Ltd.

The Commercial Bank of Australia was one of the institutions that survived the catastrophic Victorian banking crash of 1893, which destroyed or forced the reconstruction of nearly every major colonial bank. By 1914 it was operating as a going concern, but the outbreak of war that year brought immediate pressure on private note issue in Australia — the Commonwealth Bank had been established in 1911 and the federal government was actively consolidating currency control away from the trading banks.

Sands and McDougall were primarily a stationery and directory publisher pressed into security printing work, which was not unusual for the Australian colonial and early federal period given the limited specialist printing infrastructure available locally.

The bank was ultimately absorbed into the National Bank of Australasia in 1981.