Abba may well have sung Money, Money, Money into the hit parade charts in the mid-seventies, but a decade earlier Australia had its own monetary tune when in early 1966 people were clicking their fingers to the tune of the great Aussie classic ‘Click goes the Shears’ and singing:-
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
‘In come the dollars and in come the cents
To replace the pounds and the shillings and the pence
Be prepared folks when the coins begin to mix
On the 14th February, 1966.
Clink go the cents folks
Clink, clink, clink.
Change over day is closer than you think.
Learn the value of the coins
And the way that they appear
And things will be much smoother
When the decimal point is here.’
Monday, February 14, 1966 was an historic day for Australia with the official changeover from the Stirling pounds, shillings and pence to the decimal dollars and cents.
Before the week was out, the Mount Isa Mail newspaper had received over two hundred letters from readers complaining of the small shopkeepers who were ‘doing their best to rob the public’.
Mrs Lorraine Pearson of Ace Cash Store was equally quick to reply,” I run a corner store in Second Avenue and have not, and will not convert to dollars and cents, on my bank’s suggestion, until my till has been converted.”
“That means there is not the slightest chance of any of my customers being robbed of the odd cent out of three”, she recanted.
The confusion of the two-cent pieces and three pence pieces was felt across the business sector but not more so than in the groceries and hotels.
The average housewife was told she could expect to lose ‘in excess of fifty cents’ in a family shopping trip because of the blatant examples of ‘get rich quick’ shop owners who took advantage of the two pence and three pence equalling two cents.
On example given by Mrs Bullen was the cost of a milkshake which cost one shilling and six pence (1/6) before the changeover and had jumped to one shilling and nine pence (1/9) after the currency changeover.
When she queried this increase, she was promptly told that the price of milk had increased.
It was generally believed that many small shops raised the price of household commodities well before Decimal Currency Day on the pretext of preparing for the changeover, and then raised the prices again to fit in with the outgoing half-pence (halfpenny) and three pence confusion.
When surveyed, local small storekeepers said they were puzzled over who had the best of trade, them or their customers.
The pseudonym of Pussycat was given by one letter writer to the paper when she took the local milko to task.
“With our supply of milk on Friday we found a little note advising us that from Monday 14th February, we will pay 1 ½ pence more for every pint of milk – 15 cents or 16 cents.
This increase, which is explained as due to decimal currency conversion is more than nine percentage of the normal price.
Is this bad calculation use or lack of knowledge of mathematics or is it sheer cold-blooded exploitation of the general public?”
However, when Patrick Walsh, voiced his concern over the decimal currency argument at his local pub (where he was also a casual employee) he was given an unexpected answer.
Walsh had been drinking in the private bar during his off-duty hours when he noticed two-one cent pieces being tendered as threepence in his change.
“I asked the barmaid how a two cent piece would be seen as a threepence, but revert to twopence value when it went back over the bar, as part of the price of a beer,” he said.
The barmaid reported the matter to the hotel manager, who asked Walsh for the extra penny.
When Walsh again refused, he was sacked ‘on-the-spot’!
The Sterling-Decimal currency changeover nearly drove many a reputable business owner to drink but thanks to the assistance given to business houses by Mount Isa Chamber of Commerce (or as locally referred to at that time as the Chamber of Common Cents!) they kept their heads and businesses. In his annual report given later in the year, the Chamber President, Ray Donaldson, Manager of Bell and Moir, said he believed no town in Australia was better prepared for the introduction of decimal currency than Mount Isa.
He told members that six thousand exercise charts in decimal currency had been distributed and with an additional two thousand printed before the end of February; such was the demand for the charts in the community. There was not a business or person in the community unaffected by the changeover of currency. In the biggest single transaction of the changeover, banks worked well into the night to convert millions of savings and trading accounts into decimals.
And for the first time in national history, all banks closed on the previous Thursday and Friday prior to Monday 14th February 1966, to allow the monumental task to audit all accounts in sterling, then convert to decimal currency and re audit all accounts in dollars and cents. The District Police Chief, Inspector WF Barnett advised that extra police patrols would be around the town as a safeguard against any mischief makers while the banks were closed on those two days. The local postmaster said an ordinary air mail letter would cost four cents while local telephone calls would stay at six pence (five cents) and truck calls would remain the same as they were tabulated in multiples of six pence (five cents). And while the old adage of everything changes for a reason, and we worked our way through the decimal currency changeover, little did we know that within ten years we would be making another monumental change; this time to metric measurements.
Researched and written by Kim-Maree Burton. Information sourced from the Mount Isa Mail newspaper, Reserve Bank archives and the North West Star.
