50 Pounds - Union Bank of Australia Limited

The Union Bank of Australia Limited was incorporated in London in 1837 and operated as one of the major Anglo-Australian trading banks well into the twentieth century, ultimately absorbed into the ANZ Banking Group through a 1951 merger with the Bank of Australasia. High-denomination notes of this type — fifty pounds was a very substantial sum in 1905 — were rarely handled by ordinary customers and circulated almost exclusively between merchants, pastoralists, and the bank's own branches for interbank settlement.

Waterlow & Sons produced the plates for a number of Australian private bank issues during this period, and the engraving quality on Union Bank notes is generally among the finer examples of colonial-era commercial printing. Survivors are genuinely scarce; most were redeemed and pulped well before federation-era banking consolidation made these institutions obsolete.