Australia. Land of Genius Money.

Early on in my days here, I came to realize how brilliant the Aussies are in how they mint their coins and dollars compared to the US for a variety of reasons. It’s like someone sat down, threw away all of the old traditions, and said how can we make our money as easy and useful as possible. Imagine that.

Let’s start with the coinage. First, there are no pennies. They went bye bye. Everything in Australia is rounded up or down to five cent increments. Makes sense. They have a five-cent, ten-cent, twenty-cent, fifty-cent (holla!), one-dollar, and two-dollar coins. Much in the same way as the penny, they do not print a one dollar note. Its the efficiency that makes the most sense to me. With 200 hundred years of inflation its time to admit that the penny has absolutely no value. Benjamin Franklin can bite me. In regards to the one dollar bill, I can’t count the number of times I’ve gotten a note that was written on, torn, or weather to all get out. You never see a $5 note or higher treated like this. So let’s preserve the currency a bit and make it coinage like our Aussie pals across the Pacific.

The other cool thing about their coins is that the one and two dollar comes in a gold color. Now for a RPG geek like myself, its fun to pretend I’m walking around with 5gp in my pocket. Sometimes I’ll stack them up like I’m working for the medieval exchequer or playing medieval poker. Remember I said I was lucky, not cool.

I have to admit that I was a little disappointed that there weren’t specific names for their coinage, like the nickel, dime, and quarter. I was really hoping for something like England, like the quid (sterling pound to you Yanks), shilling, or five pence. I feel cultured when I say shilling. Shilling. Ah, so nice.

Apparently, one of the old PMs wanted to give them cool names (1966, Robert Menzies – thank you wikipedia). Names such as the royal, austral, or boomer. But it didn’t go over well with the Aussies and it was ignored. Damn. Double damn. I could be stacking my royals right now.

The notes are similarly brilliant. Each note comes in a different size and color. While it does look like monopoly money, there are reasons for it. In the States, I used to work the drive through at Wendy’s and sometimes the customer would hand me a $20, but I’d give him change on a $10 accidentally (I promise I didn’t keep the difference). That does not happen in Australia. Old people, young people, and even blind people can tell what kind of note they are holding based on its color, size, and even texture. Yes, texture.

Since 1988 (ibid, your honor) Australia has been using polymer notes that have plastic see through markings, a transparent window on the paper. By the way, I’m sure Aussies puff out their chest at this – they were the first to do it in the world.

Here’s my only complaint. The US economy is limping along like Barbaro and the greenback is down, down, down in a burning ring of fire (in Australian that would be fie-ah). Guess where Mr. Lucky has all of his money? Yep, that’s right – America! Now guess where Mr. Lucky spends all of his money? Right again – Australia!

When I got here three years ago, the dollar was about 72 cents to the USD, now its about 95 cents. What’s worse is that we closed on our house when it was at its highest (96.53) in 24 years (you’ve just be wikied). For those math geniuses out there, I just lost a million-kajillion percent on my money. With my promotions factored in at my old USA-based job and USA-based paychecks, I actually took a 15% pay cut over that time.

But at least my new money was cool. Right? Hello?

Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue.