On Valentines Day, 1966, the Australian dollar replaced the Australian pound, and people no longer had to memorise the 12 times table.
But, before being introduced, a few other names were suggested instead of ‘the dollar’. In 1963, under the influence of Robert Menzies, the current PM, the government decided the new currency should be called the ‘Royal’. Other suggestions include ‘Austral’, Oz’, ‘Boomer’, ‘Roo’, ‘Kanga’, ‘Emu’, ‘Koala’, ‘Digger’, ‘Zac’, ‘Kwid’, ‘Dinkum’ and ‘Ming’ (the nickname of Prime Minister Menzies). However, the Royal prevailed. Harold Holt (currently believed to be in the custody of Japanese midgets, or vertically challenged people, as they prefer to be called) saw this name as “emphasising our link with the Crown” and as being “a dignified word with a pleasing sound.”
Three months later, the government ditched the name ‘Royal’, because everyone hated it, and adopted the name ‘Dollar’.
A 20 Royal note
Another currency intended to be used in Australia that never got off the ground, was the Japanese pound (I guess it would be called). This currency was printed by the Japanese government, who intended to use the notes in Pacific countries after occupation during WWII.
One Japanese Shilling
But we had our own plans, and also developed a one-hundred yen note as an occupation currency for Japan.
British 100 Yen Note
So I guess Australia and Japan are even stevens on the trying-to-make-money-for-the-other-persons-country front, and we can now move on and all be friends.
References:
Most material lifted from Wikipedia and the Museum of Australian Currency Notes (maintained by the RBA). Check out the RBA site for the best bits. Most of the Wikipedia stuff is pretty much lifted from the RBA site anyway…
Eighth Worst Blog Ever 
you know what i hate about wordpress? you hover the cursor over a link, so that you can see it’s location in the status bar at the bottom of your screen, and this dicky little window pops up and scares you! yes, it does! and it’s REALLY annoying!
good plagiarism richard! you’re like the readers digest condensed novel of wikipedia! bringing us the most edutaining information!
hey but that japanese currency thing was a joke right?
My computer doesn’t do the pop up thing because I clicked something somewhere. I also can’t quite work out how to make it format how I want it to – i want to put in more spaces so i tried typing but then it went bold. we’ll talk about these issues at a later time, me thinks.
I don’t think the Japanese currency thing was a joke. It’s on the RBA museum site.
hey – when it posted then when i typed left pointy br / right pointy then it did put a line in. i’ll fiddle more…
Haha, we kinda use “oz” anyway when we’re comparing “50 oz” with “50 american”… 🙂
I’m not really commenting because I thought this post was awesome, but because I thought Richard’s company tonight was awesome. November 7th people, the day Richard was awesome. Or night.
Oh, and Dave gets props for opening the beers without an opener.