When did Australia change from sterling to its current currency?

Question

Well? Anyone?

I'm waiting!!!

Answer 1

After federation in the early 1900's in 1913 Australia moved away from the British pound sterling to its own currency based on the Pound. On 14 Feb 1966 Australia moved from the Australian Pound to decimal currency in the form of the Australian dollar. The reason for this was said to be that the decimal systems of tens was easier to deal with but I also suspect that that there was wide support for moving away from anything that was remotely connected to the colonial past and the term "pound" had that connotation.

Answer 2

Since leaving gold, there have been several attempts to peg the value of the pound to other currencies, initially the U.S. dollar.

Under continuing economic pressure, and despite months of denials that it would do so, on 19 September 1949, the government devalued the pound by 30%, from US$4.03 to US$2.80. The move prompted several other governments to devalue against the dollar too, including Australia, Denmark, Ireland, Egypt, India, Israel, New Zealand, Norway and South Africa.

In the mid-1960s the pound came under renewed pressure since the exchange rate against the dollar was considered too high. In the summer of 1966, with the value of the pound falling in the currency markets, exchange controls were tightened by the Wilson government. Among the measures, tourists were banned from taking more than £50 out of the country, until the restriction was lifted in 1970. The pound was eventually devalued by 14.3% to US$2.41 on 18 November 1967. [citation needed]

With the break down of the Bretton Woods system — not least because mainly British currency dealers had created a substantial Eurodollar market which made the U.S. dollar's gold standard harder for its government to maintain — the pound was floated in the early 1970s and so subject to a market appreciation. The Sterling Area effectively ended at this time when the majority of its members also chose to float freely against the pound and the dollar.

A further crisis followed in 1976, when it was apparently leaked that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) thought that the pound should be set at US$1.50, and as a result the pound fell to $1.57, and the government decided it had to borrow £2.3 billion from the IMF. In the early 1980s the pound moved above the $2 level as interest rates rose in response to the monetarist policy of targeting money supply and a high exchange rate was widely blamed for the deep recession of 1981. At its lowest, the pound stood at just US$1.05 in February 1985, before returning to US$1.77 during the 1990s. There are often long periods where the pound and the euro move in sync, although since the middle of 2006 this correlation has weakened. Inflation concerns in the U.K. led the Bank of England (BoE) to hike interest rates twice unexpectedly in late 2006 and early 2007, causing sterling to rise to its highest rate against the euro since January 2003. This had a knock on effect versus other major currencies, and the pound hit a 15 year high against the US dollar on January 23, 2007, peaking at US$1.9916 per pound

Answer 3

According to Wikipedia, the Austalian Pound was in use from 1910 to 1966.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_pound

Answer 4

it changed from decimal currency in 1966

november the 2nd from memory

Answer 5

40 to50 years back