10 Shillings Bank of New South Wales

The Bank of New South Wales was the oldest trading bank in Australia, and by the time this note was issued the institution had been operating for over a century — yet private banknote issue in Australia was already a dying practice. The Commonwealth Bank had been issuing its own notes since 1913, and the 1910 Australian Notes Act had effectively pushed private banks out of the low-denomination paper currency business by imposing a prohibitive ten-percent tax on their own issues. The survival of this series into 1921 is somewhat anomalous given that regulatory climate.

Skipper & East's work for colonial and dominion banks was prolific in this period, and the plates show it — competent intaglio work, but produced to a commercial house standard rather than a central bank one.