Colony

The first appearances of First Nations peoples and their culture in the 1920s and 1950s denoted the period’s allegiance to the idea of the British Empire, rather than to an understanding of the original custodians of the country and their views of its history.

The landing of Captain Cook

The printing of Australia’s first national banknotes (1913-1914) was preceded by political changes that had created the framework for their issuance. In 1901 the Federation of Australia brought together the country’s six self-governing colonies into political union with federal structure – the Commonwealth of Australia. The Federation of the country had been motivated partly by the wish to develop a coordinated, national economy, and the constitution of the new nation gave the Commonwealth Government the power to legislate in regard to its currency. In 1910, the legislation for the country’s currency was enacted, preparing the way for the printing of the nation’s first series of banknotes.

The front of each banknote in the first series showed the Commonwealth coat of arms with the badges of the country’s six states. The images selected for the back of the banknotes displayed diverse views of regional Australia – coastal, pastoral and, for mining, subterranean – and identified sources of the country’s prosperity. The succession of scenes complemented the coat of arms’ badges and constituted a type of panoramic mural of the federated nation, encompassing the majority of its states.

Known as the Harrison Series (1923-1925) after the Australian Note Printer, Thomas Harrison, the next series of banknotes repeated the imagery of most vistas from the first banknotes, while improving the currency’s security. The portrait of the reigning British monarch was included for the first time on Australian banknotes, with the profile of King George V appearing on each denomination. As the significance of gold mining had declined, the image of the Victoria Quartz Mine was replaced on the £1 banknote with a reproduction of E Phillips Fox’s painting of 1902, the Landing of Captain Cook at Botany Bay, 1770.

In 1900, Phillips Fox was awarded a commission under the Gillbee Bequest to complete a major painting of a scene from Australia’s history; the painting would join the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria. A requirement of the bequest made by William Gillbee (1825-1885) was for the painting to be completed in England, so suggesting the presumed necessity of European influence for Australian culture.

The painting shows Lieutenant James Cook landing at Botany Bay, south of Port Jackson, and raising the British flag while the ship, His Majesty’s Bark Endeavour, hovers in the background. Cook seems to restrain his men from firing their muskets as the botanist, Joseph Banks, points to members of Gweagal clan, who dispute the landing and are assigned a peripheral role in the re-enactment.  

Completed a year after Federation, Phillips Fox’s painting was thought to contribute to a sense of national concord. It recreated a pivotal scene in the country’s history, whose significance in the founding of the contemporary nation was perceived to be shared and unanimous. The first series of banknotes portrayed a federated view of Australia through its gallery of contemporary vistas; it was enhanced in the next series by an historical view that also appeared to consolidate national unity. The visual interplay between present-day Australia and its colonial past would become a feature of the banknotes issued in the 1950s.

The offerings of the land

The next series of banknotes, known as the Ash Series (1933-1934; 1938-1940) after Harrison’s successor, John Ash, featured vignettes of figures in classical poses, contributing to the economy through their labour and skill. Their display of physical strength and agility was consistent with a belief in the young, athletic nation during the inter-war period. No reference is made to Australia’s First Nations in these banknotes.

A new series of Australian banknotes was issued in 1953 and 1954. The design of this series reduced the previous emphasis on the sources of the country’s prosperity, and became the first to portray a sequence of Australia’s historical identities, complemented by examples of native flora. It was also the first series to refer directly to Aboriginal culture on an issued banknote.

The selection of the historical portraits was developed by the Bank’s Advisory Council, which comprised senior Bank and Department of Treasury officials, including Dr Roland Wilson. The Council decided on a selection of colonial portraits for the banknotes, the subject of colonial history being of special interest to Roland Wilson.

Concern about the relevance of colonial figures was raised by Gordon McCracken, General Manager of the Bank’s Note Printing Branch. Like McCracken, the Bank’s Governor Dr HC Coombs also preferred more recent identities, and recommended Australia’s first three prime ministers, Sir Edmund Barton, Alfred Deakin and JC Watson, to the Advisory Council. However, the Council rejected the proposal in favour of colonial figures; the representation of more diverse identities would need to wait until the decimal currency series of the 1960s.

Designed with the assistance of the artist, Napier Waller, and sculptor, Leslie Bowles, the historical figures were coupled on the reverse sides of the banknotes with representations of the contemporary nation that developed from colonial antecedents, together with the new monarch, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. The images reflected an assurance in the nation’s stable government, prosperous agriculture and advanced science, and the banknotes’ interface between the country’s historical identities and its material progress served to justify the assumed legitimacy of colonisation.

Portrayed in a style reminiscent of Greco-Roman coins, the profiles of the explorers, Charles Sturt and Hamilton Hume, evoked their contributions to the colonising role of the British Empire, united on the £1 banknote with the profile of the current monarch. The 10 shillings banknote portrayed Matthew Flinders, who completed the first recorded circumnavigation of the continent and promoted the name ‘Australia’ as a single, unifying term for the country. His portrait is combined with a view of Parliament House, Canberra, representing the federal government. Arthur Phillip, the first Governor of New South Wales, was portrayed on the £10 banknote, and symbols of future planning and innovatory science were depicted on the other side.

Represented on the £5 banknote was the naval officer and navigator, Sir John Franklin, who served as the Lieutenant-Governor of Tasmania (1837–1843), and founded the Tasmanian Natural History Society, the first scientific Royal Society established outside Britain. The companion side to his portrait depicted Australia’s pastoral bounty and invoked the traditional idyll of nature yielding voluntarily to human needs without apparent labour or force.

The tableau may also allude to a harvest festival display in its symmetrical arrangement of plentiful produce. The scene includes wheat and barley, species of fruit, a Merino ram and ewe, and a Hereford bull and Jersey cow. First Nations culture is represented through the inclusion of shields and a boomerang. Placed centrally as a type of pivot to the symmetry, the boomerang may symbolise the cyclical nature of the seasons, their renewing quality and the promise of the harvest’s return.

Traditionally, the harvest festivals of European countries incorporated the pagan rituals and symbols of their pre-Christian past. In so doing, they reduced the independence and potency of these practices. The inclusion of the First Nations implements may imply a similar approach, acknowledging the past custodianship of the land, while indicating that its presence is historical and superficial rather than current and meaningful. The harmonious merger of the implements within the imagery of European agriculture may suggest a visual counterpart to the period’s policy of assimilation, the enforced absorption of Australia’s First Nations peoples.