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5 Pounds Commercial Bank of Australia Ltd.
| Issuer | Commercial Bank of Australia Limited |
|---|---|
| Year | 1917-1919 |
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| Reference(s) | P#S279 |
| Obverse description | Central vignette of a reclining allegorical female figure holding a caduceus, with a ship in port and industrial factories in the background. Ornate guilloche borders frame the design, with the bank title and promise-to-pay inscription arranged across the note. The denomination FIVE POUNDS appears in the lower portion alongside the place of issue, Wellington, New Zealand. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse lettering | THE COMMERCIAL BANK OF AUSTRALIA LIMITED FIVE POUNDS |
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| Comments |
The Commercial Bank of Australia Limited was one of the few Australian private trading banks still issuing its own notes into the World War I period — a practice that would effectively end with the 1910 Australian Notes Act, though existing private notes remained legal tender until 1914 and continued circulating informally for some years after. By 1917, this series was already an anachronism. The Commonwealth Bank had long assumed the dominant note-issuing role, and private bank paper was being steadily withdrawn from active use.
Waterlow & Sons produced this note at their London operation, as they did for a significant portion of Australasian colonial and private bank issues. The CBA was absorbed into the National Bank of Australasia in 1981, but its note-issuing history had ended six decades earlier.