5 Pounds Commercial Bank of Australia Ltd.

The Commercial Bank of Australia was one of the few Australian private banks to survive the catastrophic bank crashes of 1893 relatively intact, which gave it the institutional confidence to continue issuing its own notes well into the twentieth century. Private banknote issue in Australia was not abolished until the Australian Notes Act of 1910, which granted the Commonwealth a monopoly — but existing private notes were permitted to remain in circulation until redeemed, creating a transitional period during which state-issued and private notes circulated simultaneously.

Sands and McDougall were primarily a Melbourne stationery and printing firm, not a specialist security printer, which makes their banknote output for Australian private banks during this window genuinely unusual. The 1914–1916 date range places this note squarely in wartime, when gold hoarding and currency anxiety made high-denomination private paper increasingly awkward to pass.