SYDNEYSIDE WITH JANET PARR First ten years of decimal currency

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34097, 8 March 1976, Page 6

SYDNEYSIDE WITH JANET PARR First ten years of decimal currency

Just more than 10 years ago, a little old lady interviewed in the street confided to the interviewer: “It’s only a fad you know. It will soon pass.’’

She was wrong, of course, but what she said has become legend for she was talking about the introduction of decimal currency. Even as she spoke the banks had closed their doors on the last of the pounds, shillings and pence, and when they reopened them it would be to hand out dollars and cents.

| Feelings were running high I in some places about those ■ new-fangled coins. Now, ten (years later, the heat and the argument are long passed, I dollars and cents are part of [the way of life. On the tenth ' birthday of Dollar Bill—a cartoon character who helped . to promote the new currency —most people look back 1 without anger and with a : feeling of surprise that it can i really all have been ten years j ago With some amusement, too. remembering that the dollar might just have been the royal (made up of two 50 icrowns), an austral, a zac, a (quid or a roo. For various good reasons all those names (were dropped. But with a ; touch of nostalgia it is somedimes remembered that the old slang names for the old money, the quid, the deener, ‘ the zac, the trey have also i vanished. And ten years later (the new coins have not picked i up any nicknames along the way. Britain, with its conver- ; sion. still in the future, threw

i up a "ten shilling” school of ! thought, quoting the “logic” i of the Australian and New : Zealand dollar based on ten , shillings into 100 cents as ’ being far more workable i than the proposed British i conversion based on a 20I shilling unit divided into 100 ■ “new” pence. Time and ex- : perience have probably i : proved the critics right. i' Not that much of it really ;j matters now. And the Australian and New Zealand con- I . versions at least made it pos-I • sible, theoretically, to become I : a millionaire in half the time: l it did a decade ago, and still I does in Britain. Now that the West Australians have introduced the : first ever lottery with a slm prize someone is going to be ; a millionaire overnight. So many people would like to that there has been a flood of applications for tickets. One Sydney newspaper has just had some fun asking and getting answers to the question: “What would you do with it?” Answers were varied. “I’d 1

[ thank the Lord and pass out,” ; wrote one woman. Others wanted to feed the starving in Bangladesh, light Cuban [ cigars with ten and 20 dollar ! hills, set up classes for “slow ; learners,” make a personal [Garden of Eden; learn to yodel; take a trip to Mars; [start a “campaign for hapjpiness”; buy 3,300,000 midI dies of beer: buy a new [house to replace a flooded one; enough inseticide to kill all the flies in the country; help their families; help their friends; help the needy generally; help Autralian writers, doctors, teachers, orphans. One man wanted his own [willow tree to sit under on [Sunday afternoons, another [to support an orchestra to [enliven Sunday afternoons in (the manner of European reports.

A pensioner wanted to give [it to the Prime Minister (Mr Fraser) to help his costcutting campaign. Yet other people wanted to take a sporting chance with it buying Australian paintings, backing horses and a rugby league club, gambling that it would pay off and make them even richer. Ten of those who answered won a sporting chance of half a loaf anyway. The bestliked ones received a ticket in the N.S.W. half-million! dollar lottery.