Mary Gilmore New Zealand Bank Note

Dame Mary Gilmore (1865-1962)

“Youth troubles over eternity, age grasps at a day and is satisfied to have even the day.”

Australia’s ‘grand old lady of letters’ features on the first polymer $10 note. The Reserve Bank of Australia described Dame Mary Gilmore as a ‘highly popular and nationally known writer’. She was a founding member of the Fellowship of Australian Writers and Sydney’s Lyceum Club and was active in organisations as diverse as the New South Wales Institute of Journalists and the Aboriginal Australian Fellowship.

Dame Mary Gilmore campaigned for a wide range of social and economic reforms, such as votes for women, old-age and invalid pensions, child endowment and improved treatment of returned servicemen, the poor and Aboriganls. An excerpt from her poem, No Foe Shall Gather Our Harvest, appears on the far left-handside of the banknote, and is based on a letter written by Dame Mary Gilmore on the 2 March 1942. Excerpts from the poem also features in the microprint.

The new $10 banknote has a range of innovative new security features designed to keep the banknote secure from counterfeiting. Each domination in the new series of banknotes will feature a different species of Australian wattle and a native bird within a number of the security feature; the Bramble Wattle and the Sulphur-crested Cockatoo. The polymer banknote is the first denomination in the polymer series to have something other than the value printed on it in microprint.