A note from the final year of paper Five Dollar banknotes.
Banks and Chisolms last run appearance and curtain call before being replaced by Queen Elizabeth II.
The last run of a series that displayed Australian native flora on its face. I think we all liked the colouration as well.
A great final piece in a long history of paper notes beginning back in 1969.
A magnificent example to grace your note folder.
Design
Obverse: Sir Joseph Banks, 1st Baronet, GCB, PRS (13 February 1743 – 19 June 1820) was a British naturalist, botanist and patron of the natural sciences. He took part in Captain James Cook’s first great voyage (1768–1771). Banks is credited with the introduction to the Western world of eucalyptus, acacia, mimosa, and the genus named after him, Banksia. Approximately 80 species of plants bear Banks’s name. Banks was also the leading founder of the African Association, a British organization dedicated to the exploration of Africa, and a member of the Society of Dilettanti, which helped to establish the Royal Academy.
Reverse: Caroline Chisholm (30 May 1808 – 25 March 1877) was a progressive 19th-century English humanitarian known mostly for her involvement with female immigrant welfare in Australia. She is commemorated in the Calendar of saints of the Church of England. There are proposals for the Catholic Church to also recognise her as a saint,
Watermark: Captain Cook in left panel
History
It was Banks’s own time in Australia, however, that led to his interest in the British colonisation of that continent. He was to be the greatest proponent of settlement in New South Wales: in fact, the name “Banksia” was proposed for the region by Linnaeus. In the end a genus of Proteaceae was named in his honour as Banksia. In 1779 Banks, giving evidence before a committee of the House of Commons, had stated that in his opinion the place most eligible for the reception of convicts “was Botany Bay, on the coast of New Holland”. His interest did not stop there, for when the settlement started, and for 20 years afterwards, his fostering care and influence was always being exercised. He was in fact the general adviser to the government on all Australian matters. He arranged that a large number of useful trees and plants should be sent out in the supply ship HMSGuardian which, however, was wrecked, and every vessel that came from New South Wales brought plants or animals or geological and other specimens to Banks. He was continually called on for help in developing the agriculture and trade of the colony, and his influence was used in connection with the sending out of early free settlers, one of whom, a young gardener George Suttor, afterwards wrote a memoir of Banks. The three earliest governors of the colony, Arthur Phillip, John Hunter, and Philip Gidley King, were continually in correspondence with him. Bligh was also appointed governor of New South Wales on Banks’s recommendation. He followed the explorations of Matthew Flinders, George Bass and Lieutenant James Grant, and among his paid helpers were George Caley, Robert Brown and Allan Cunningham. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1788.
*All biographical details are taken from Wikipedia for education purposes only.