I didn't have much opportunity to do a PAD shot today. It was overcast and occasionally drizzly (yet a-sodding-gain) and there are only so many grey light shots that you can take. And with 9 people dead and over 50 missing in the Queensland floods, I'm thoroughly sick of rain anyway right now.

Aside from which today was Hell Day at work and I had a visitor at lunch time, so I planned to just fall back on Ol' Faithful, the still life.

In this case I've raided the coin collection again, though on this occasion I've stuck to paper currency rather than metal to commemorate the uncommon date 11-1-11. (Which admittedly would be 1-11-11 f you're an American, which I'm not and frankly I think that our date system makes more sense. And the system YYYYMMDD more sense still, as you can tell from my image names.)

On the left are two relics from our earliest decimal currency. The first is the original $10 note. Note the "Commonwealth Of Australia" banner across the top, which was used from the introduction of decimal currency in 1966 until the Whitlam Labor government of 1972-1975 changed it to simply "Australia" as shown in the $1 note below. The notes are "signed" by the Governor of the Reserve Bank and the Secretary to the Treasury. This one was signed by Sir John Phillips and Sir Richard Randall respectively which would place its date of issue between July 1968 (Phillips' appointment) and October 1971 (Randall's retirement). It features convict architect Francis Greenway on the front, who was the original designer of the Macquarie Lighthouse seen in the PAD of 1 January.

The $1 note below was the original staple of the currency but had lost so much value by 1984 that it was replaced by a coin. This one would have been issued between August 1982 and September 1984 (Bob Johnston / John Stone respectively), making it one of the last of its kind.

The US note in the middle is a left-over from my one and likely only trip to the USA, late in the last millennium. The fact that it's an American note has no particular significance beyond the fact that I didn't want to use an Australian $1 three times and I don't have any other one dollar notes.

The second $10 note on the right was issued in 1988 and was our first flirtation with polymer rather than paper currency. It was withdrawn because there were problems with the longevity of the anti-forgery holographic device. (The bit in the top left corner which blew out completely under the flash; it's a hologram of Captain Cook.) By 1992 these problems had been sorted out, leading to the polymer notes that we use today.

The second Australian $1 note harks from the same timeframe as the first one, but slightly later if the serial number is any guide.