The 1964 guide to the flora and fauna on the banknotes of Aotearoa.
Since the passing of Queen Elizabeth II we have, like Snoop Dogg, had our minds on our money and our money on our minds. Specifically, we’ve got our minds on the prospect of being confronted by King Charles III’s sad bewildered gaze every time we hit an ATM.
Not to worry, for now. Apparently, it will be several years before the new royal mazzard graces our banknotes, which won’t happen until our current stock of $20 bills starts to be depleted. That’s if he makes it onto the $20 notes. Seven currency series have been issued by the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) since its inception in 1934, and the British monarch has not been prominent since 1991. Prior to that, Queen Elizabeth II had pride of place on every denomination – seven different-coloured Lilibets, one for each note from $1 through $100. Not only did the $1 and $2 bills get the chop in ’91 in favour of coins, the Queen was replaced on all but the twenty by a range of notable New Zealanders, including Sir Āpirana Turupa Ngata, Kate Sheppard and Sir Edmund Hillary. (Sir Ed was, famously, the first living non-monarch to appear on New Zealand currency. This led to a situation in a Northland café I worked in wherein Sir Ed himself stopped in for a spot of cabinet food and paid for it with a “Sir Ed” and I have not quite recovered.)
More enduring than Her Majesty have been our native birds. Feathered fauna have featured on New Zealand’s money since the start. This might have something to do with our currency’s design parameters, which, according to the RBNZ, are as follows: “distinctive and with clear New Zealand visual themes … resistant to being counterfeited, and with a professional design that both reflects its purpose as legal tender, and which is likely to appeal to a wide range of the public.” Basically, hard to fake, instantly identifiable as “New Zealand-ish”, and unlikely to make people mad.
Probably for all those reasons, avian content is also common beyond our borders when it comes to cash. Birds are by far the most prevalent animal associated with the world’s money. Eagles alone are found on the banknotes of more than 40 nations, trumping Queen Elizabeth, who graced at least 33 currencies – the most of any monarch in history according to Guinness World Records. Standout bill-birds include a long-legged Great Egret wading across the back of the Brazilian 5 real bill, an outstanding Aruban Burrowing Owl on Aruba’s 25 florin note and the new Ethiopian 200-birr, which hosts a very timely peace dove. In Canada, a dollar is known colloquially as a “loonie”, thanks to the loon that adorns the reverse side of the $1 coin. The $2 coin is thus known as a “twoonie”. Of course it is.
But what of Aotearoa’s feathered funds? Our country’s first national banknotes all looked the same (different values were different colours) and they all featured a bird: a North Island brown kiwi, who shared space with a portrait of King Tāwhiao, the second Māori king. Captain James Cook replaced the king for the next currency (speaking of making people angry), and each denomination got its own design. The kiwi disappeared from the one-pound, but did appear on the back of the 10 shilling. Five pounds had a tiny piwakaka / fantail in the bottom corner, while the tūī got a spot on the fifty.
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In 1967, we moved away from the fusty money of the motherland and switched to decimal currency. It was the perfect time to embrace the fact that New Zealand has a superpower, and that superpower is cool birds. Each bill now had a New Zealand bird on the back, along with a thematically-linked plant and/or landscape. It was a classic lineup: piwakaka ($1), tītitipounamu / rifleman ($2), tūī ($5), kea ($10), kererū / New Zealand pigeon ($20) and takahē ($100). There were no $50 notes until 1981, when the ruru / morepork got that honour. There was even a suggestion for a time that Aotearoa’s currency be named, à la Canadian, the “tūī” or the “kiwi”. In the end, we just got “dollar”.
The design we have today dates to 1991. As well as moving the Queen on from everything but the $20, that year saw a total revamp of the bird lineup. The hoiho, whio, kārearea, kōkako and mohua hopped aboard on, respectively, the $5, $10, $20, $50 and $100. Don’t fret for the kiwi though; they got a spot on the back of the $1, still ubiquitous in dashboard ashtrays across the nation.
With minor tweaks, including the switch from paper to a more robust polymer substrate and extra security features like the shiny ‘Spark Live’ image of each bird (tilt your bills to see the colour change!), they have been there ever since. We’ve put our bucks in a row and taken a closer look at the birdy banknotes of Aotearoa New Zealand.
$5: Hoihoi and co.
The reverse side of the $5 features the hoihoi / yellow-eyed penguin chilling out down south on the subantarctic Campbell Island. Despite being a member of the world’s rarest penguin species, which must be a bit sobering, he’s happily hopping about on a patch of ross lilies, which can grow up to a metre tall and bloom a beautiful yellow in summer. The most recent version of our fiver was named the IBNS Banknote of the Year at the 2016 meeting of the International Bank Note Society, beating out notables like Russia’s 100 ruble and the Swedish 20 kronor.
$10: The duck buck
Our $10 note is the home of the highly endangered whio, which, delightfully, has a call that sounds like “whio”, making it easy to remember its name. Mostly found in the clean and fast-flowing rivers of both the North and South Islands, the whio is also known as the blue duck, which is also easy to remember if you’ve got a blue ten-dollar bill in your hand. Plant-wise, we’ve got a kiokio fern, which loves riverbanks; a pineapple scrub, a shrub from the heath family that has pineapple vibes; and, to go with Kate Sheppard on the front, a white camelia, which was the flower given to members of parliament who supported universal suffrage in 1893.
$20: The Queen’s beast
This is the only New Zealand banknote to still feature the ex-British Sovereign. The main features on the back of the twenty are the majestic kārearea / New Zealand falcon backed by the equally majestic, but less deadly Mount Tapuae-o-Uenuku, the Kaikōura Ranges’ tallest peak and the highest point outside of the Southern Alps. Kārearea can reach speeds of up to 200 kph and can prey on animals larger than themselves, dispatching them with a combination of terrifyingly sharp talons and a powerful bite to the neck. Fun falcon fact: At the late Queen Elizaeth II’s coronation in 1953, a falcon was named as one of The Queen’s Beasts, along with critters like a unicorn, a gryphon, a white lion and a yale, whatever that is.
$50: Endangered species
The bird on the $50 banknote is the kōkako, which is so rare it is probably extinct on the South Island. This seems appropriate in light of the current cost of living; I live on the South Island, and I haven’t had a fifty in my pocket since I blew that last one on three tomatoes and a sack of flour eight months ago. Then there’s the utterly rad Entoloma hochstetteri mushroom, or werewere-kōkako, so named because its bright blue colour is reminiscent of the wattle of the kōkako. According to the RBNZ, it was investigated by University of Auckland in the early 2000s as a potential source of natural blue food colouring. No, they are not psychedelic, that’s just a rumour.
$100: Cash for canaries
Who knows. I’m a professional writer, I haven’t seen one of these in person ever. Apparently, there’s a wee endemic mohua / yellowhead (also known as a bush canary) perched on a red beech branch on the back. They are also endangered, thanks in particular to a rat plague in the Haast Pass region driven by warmer temperatures. If you’ve got a spare hundy, keep an eye out for the ‘Give a Mohua for a Mohua’ campaign, which will be taking donations in support of the volunteer to help save these little canaries down the coalmine of climate-induced extinction.
LAURA WILLIAMSON
