Catalog
5 Dollars
| Issuer | Reserve Bank of Australia |
|---|---|
| Year | 1995-2015 |
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| Printer | Note Printing Australia, Melbourne, Australia (1998-date) |
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| Obverse description | Intaglio portrait of Queen Elizabeth II at centre-right, rendered in fine line engraving against a pink and lilac guilloche underprint; a wattle branch with delicate botanical detail occupies the left portion of the note. Two facsimile signatures appear to the right of the portrait, attributed to the Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia and the Secretary to the Treasury, with the denomination numeral '5' in the upper-right corner above a floral security device and the Note Printing Australia logo at lower right. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
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| Variants | P#51a - 1995 & 1996 signatures: Evans & Fraser with wide (normal) Orientation Bands P#51b - 1995 signatures: Evans & Fraser Error: with narrow Orientation Bands P#51c - 1996, 1997 & 1998 signatures: Evans & Macfarlane error in catalog: 2002 & 2003 belong to AUSTRALIA P-57 |
| Comments |
Australia's polymer $5 was part of the world's first complete polymer banknote series, a transition the Reserve Bank completed by 1996 after years of development with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation. The substrate itself was the story — Guardian polymer, manufactured by Innovia Films from a technology originally developed in Melbourne, eventually licensed to dozens of central banks globally.
The narrow orientation band error on the 1995 Evans & Fraser issue is a genuine production variant, not a cataloguing anomaly. The orientation bands — the clear strips visible under UV — were printed at incorrect width, likely during a press setup run before tolerances were corrected. The cataloguing confusion around the 2002 and 2003 dates, misattributed here to P#51 rather than P#57, reflects a long-standing Pick error that has caused persistent misidentification in dealer stock.