5 Pounds

The Bank of New South Wales was the oldest trading bank in Australia, and by 1910 it was operating across multiple colonies-turned-states as well as in New Zealand and the Pacific. Private banknote issuance in Australia continued well after Federation in 1901 — the Commonwealth Bank didn't begin issuing notes until 1913, and the legal monopoly on issue came later still. These Waterlow-printed notes were legitimate commercial instruments circulating alongside those of rival private banks.

Waterlow & Sons had a long relationship with Australian colonial and commercial issuers. The guilloche underprint was their standard counterfeit deterrent on commercial bank work of this period — mechanically intricate, difficult to replicate by hand or early photographic reproduction.