1 Pound

The Bank of New South Wales was the oldest trading bank in Australia, established in 1817, and by the time this note was issued it had been operating for nearly a century under a private banking charter — not a central bank mandate. Australian states had their own note-issuing banks well into Federation, and the Commonwealth Bank didn't begin crowding out private issuers until the Note Issue Act of 1910, the very year this note dates from. That Act imposed a ten-percent tax on private bank notes still in circulation after July 1911, effectively strangling the private issue trade.

This note almost certainly saw a short remaining window of legal circulation before the tax made continued issue economically unviable for the Bank.