American reacts to Classic Australian Currency Jingle (Decimal Currency song)
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- Опубликовано: 7 янв 2024
- Thanks for watching me, a humble American, react to the Decimal Currency song
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I think this jingle is set to the classic old song ‘click go the shears’
Correct
yep
Too right
Yep it is, as soon as I heard it a few years ago I knew I recognised it then I listened to click go the shears and knew it was the same but different words...
Also adopted for the McDonald's "Make It Click" seatbelt campaign.
As kids during the change to decimal currency, we learned from the local shop that if you gave over a whole shilling (12 pennies), you'd only get 10 cents worth of lollies, but if you bought one penny's worth of lollies at a time you could get 12 cents worth of lollies - at 3 for a penny, that was a big deal LOL - drove the local shopkeeper wild! :)
Too true, especially when both sets of coins were still cn circulation.
I can so relate to this. I however only got sixpence pocket money.
I remember conning the local shop with this trick. After the first few days they cottoned on to what we were doing, and asked us to show how much we had altogether. Was sad knowing they figured it out.
Haha you were an evil child weren't you. Damn! I didn't think of it.
I remember once in 1957 when I was 6 finding a farthing in my change! I don't how since they'd been out of circulation for years and years.
I was 9 and will never forget this song. For kids, it was a very exciting time.
I remember this song being on television. On the 14th of Feb 1966 my sister and I were walking to school and we had some money to go swimming and to get our lunch. We were so excited to see the new money we stopped to get some lollies and we made sure we only spent enough so that we would get change. We had sixpence each and so we spent enough to use threepence and we got a 2 cent piece each in change. We were late to school because we spent so much time examining the new 2 cent coin 🤣
I was born in 1961 and just 5 years later the decimal system started just as I was starting school. Im so glad they taught it in school just as I was starting.
The decimal currency came to NZ the following year, the day I started school
I don't think anyone who lived through that campaign will ever forget it. I turned fourteen that year. I was in second year at high school. I think just about every group of advertisements on the television they threw that one in for good luck. The tune is from the song "Click go the shears". It was a hell of a time to get stuck behind an elderly person in a shop. You had to stand there while they tried to convert to the new currency. The character "Dollar Bill" was created by a wonderful artist by the name of Monty Wedd. Monty and his wife Dorothy were a couple who once met were never forgotten. They were wonderful people. Thank you for posting the clip it has brought back many happy memories.
Finally someone else on RUclips around my age! I was 12 in 1966.
@@warrenturner397Me too, born in 1954.
@@warrenturner397I remember this jingle and the other advance publicity at the time. I was 18 that conversion day and made a point of doing some shopping hoping to be given a decimal coin in change but unfortunately wasn't. I recall most of the more mature shop staff preferring to calculate in old money then converting the answer to new money. I also remember all prices printed on items in both imperial and metric for some months.
I was 6 1/2 when the switch happened and a brand new immigrant (10 pound pom). Our ship docked in Australia for the first time on the 14th February 1966. We had to change our British pounds to the new currency before we could leave the dock.
America uses decimal currency. It's based on the number 10. The tune is "Click Go the Shears", another Australian song about sheep shearing. However, it was based on an American song called "Ring the Bell, Watchman”. We were always aware of the decimal system and used it in medicine measurements, for example. Just working out what the new currency was worth in the old to wrap our minds around it was the challenge. Yes, we had halfpennies (pronounced hayp-nees).Our money was based on the British system. They since have retained the names, but changed the values to metric sums. The 5 cent coin was an echidna, not a platypus.
I always thought that the Florin was very strange. We had a three pence but it was pronounced Thrup-pence
Don't forget the lowest value coin the farthing, it was 1/4 of a penny.
@@edwinakastner8806 Slang was a tray, others zac, dina and 2 bob
@@petercaughlan962 Australia never had farthings as a part of their currency, even though in the early days British money was used.
@xymonau2468 the farthings that were circulated in Australia were minted in the UK. The thing I found confusing at the time wasn't a coin, the guinea was used as a value in advertisements and was above the pound.
I was a teller in a bank in Sydney on February 14, 1966. All banks had been closed for 3 days so that the bank staff could acquaint themselves with the new currency and to convert (manually) all of our accounts to decimal currency. Needless to say, it was a long day. I remember getting home about 11:00PM as one of our tellers made a huge error (short by $100) in their cash holdings. The rule was that no-one could leave until everyone's cash holdings balanced. Nightmare times!!
Fun fact: some early computers that operated in base 10 had special additional hardware specifically for supporting currency calculations in pounds/shillings/pence.
Yes, decimal computers were a thing. They were actually designed to implement base 10 operations in hardware. Later machines included support for Binary-Coded Decimal instead, and BCD instructions live on in some of our current instruction sets (the most common being x86). In fact, the Playstation 3 had a bug where it erroneously thought 2010 was a leap-year due to faulty handling of BCD data.
Hi Ryan, I enjoy all your reactions on Australia, I grew up in the UK and emigrated to Aus back in 1970 after the conversion to decimal currency, although the UK were still useing pound shillings and pence when we left for Aus. The old system was 12 pennies = 1 shilling, 12 shillings = 1 pound, and there were 240 pennies to the pound, yes there were half pennies and even quater pennies which were called farthings hence the old bicycles with the big wheel at the front and small wheel at the back were called pennyfarthings.
Actually, "That'll be the Day" would be the perfect song for the American switch to the metric system.
As one who lived through this it took some getting used to. Later we gave up miles, yards, feet and inches and switched to kilometers, meters, centimeters, liters milliliters. We still drive on the left hand side.
@tyedel except we spell kilometres, metres like this.
I've remained confused ever since needing to convert. The young'nes weigh babies in kilos and I have to Google before I can say "Oooh, that's a whopper" or "Ahhhh so tiny" 😂
@@PH_1964I learnt in kilos but when it comes to babies it still means more in pounds 😂
Hmmm Do you drive a 4wd or suv; a campervan or rv. My spell checker prefers er to re. The re is probably French.
@@infin8ee Maybe they should be universally measured in Melons......Honeydew or Watermelon anyone? 😬🤣Ouch! 😳🤣
The metric system was made the official measurement of the USA in 1866.
It's just difficult to get all the states to convert
This is burned deep into my memory, every word! The currency change happened three months after I'd moved from England (still on pounds/shillings/pence at that point) to Oz, so this song was everywhere at the time.
I just love how our largest coin, $2 is the smallest coin haha
This was a public demand thing, generally the population didn't want a bigger coin than the new $1.00 coin. so a smaller design was settled on.
@@RonSchuurman-td7yj in New Zealand it's different, it's the other way around. I had trouble when I tripped over there and looked at my coins. The $2 coin is bigger than the $1 coin there and they are different sized to the Aussie $1 and $2 coins.
lots of pre decimal silver coins was still in circulation during my childhood, i have collected a few, i am 60 years old,
I think you'll find the 5c coin is just a whisker smaller than the $2 coin, and almost exactly half as thick. Years ago, kids used to super-glue 2 of them together and try to use them in place of the gold coin in vending machines and pinball/amusement machines. Didn't really work though.
@@endothermWhen I was about 11, I used to visit my dad in England, collect a bunch of 2p coins and then take them to the arcade back home in the US and play many very cheap games of Pac-Man, Asteroids and Defender 😂
The fifty cent coin was first introduced with decimal currency on 14 February 1966. The original design featured the Commonwealth Coat of Arms struck on a coin made from 80% silver. However as the silver price rose above the face value of the coin the Mint suspended striking of the coin in March 1968.
Although it was rumoured that the Mint had lost money striking the fifty cent, all the metal used in the manufacture of the 36.5 million coins produced was purchased before the price rises.
Apart from the uneconomic cost of continuing the issue of the silver fifty cent coins, increasing confusion arose regarding the similarity in sizes between the circular fifty cent and the twenty cent coin. The decision to reissue a fifty cent coin considered not only a change to materials but also different shapes to help solve the confusion with the twenty cents.
A new Dodecagonal shape and alloy was reintroduced into circulation in September 1969.
I’m not old enough to have seen the change to decimal currency, but I do remember singing the Australian national anthem, God Save the Queen at school. This remained the national anthem right up until 1984 (up until 1952 it was of course God Save the King).
I was the only kid in my primary school band who could play God Save the Queen all the way through without mistakes. Yeah, go me 😂😂
@@FionaEm yeah go you! That’s so cool. Both anthems have a few notes that are too high for most of us to sing so they always sound terrible in a crowd 😂
@@Dr_KAP 😂😂
We learnt that song in school so we could remember the new decimal currency but still had to learn the imperial system until 1972 when the metric system started here the $1 note was brown and the $2 note was green now they are coins the good thing about it was if you were at school in the 50's or 60's you learnt the imperial and metric systems that made it easy for you to convert things
Really good reaction Ryan.
I was 11 when we went decimal in the UK and remember it well. Id just got my head around all the ins and outs of the system,mthe nicknames for all the coins etc and how to calculate in my head and was a bit miffed when it was changed. People think it must have been really complicated and difficult to use but everyone for several hundred years had managed quite happily to that point so it wasnt that hard. What i liked was the character and history of it as opposed to the sterility of the decimal system . Of course decimal everything is way easier, and i consider myself lucky that due to my age im fluent in both.
I wouldn't have thought anyone meant it was hard to use in general.
Just that it was probably more tricky when it came to dividing it. It wouldn't have divided evenly, making it somewhat annoying.
Oh boy.... that was a fun ramble back in time. I went through all of elementary school (primary school in AUS) having to learn to add up the three columns (12 pence in a shilling , 20 shillings in a pound) and then it became so much easier with just two columns and everything a multiple of 10. I still have my bank savings passbook when the money changed and 1 pound became 2 dollars..... all of a sudden I had twice as much money in my account - hah hah.
……there were also ‘sovereigns’, & ‘guineas’. Racehorses’, & yearlings’ were always sold in ‘guineas’ which was 21 shillings, or £1.1 This persisted for several years after 1966.
Note the 1966 50c coin was round and contained more then 50c worth of silver so they changed it to the dodecagonal (12 sided) coin in 1969 (not 1967)
Nope, the 12-sided cupro-nickel 50c piece was introduced in 1969. There were no 50c coins minted in 1967 or 1968.
@@rorylyons277 LOL - you made me look it up... indeed you are correct, 1969 was introduction - thanks for keeping me honest.
And changed shape because it was easily confused with the 20c?
I believe so, the milling round the edges also helps with determining a coins value.
old enough to have used the old and new currencies. The half-penny was pronounced "hape-enny". Before my time there was also the farthing or one quarter of a penny. A pound was usually referred to as a Quid, probably from the Latin "quid-pro-quo" (ie something for something).
As was I. At the time, I had a Saturday job in a greengrocery/milk bar (under the unusual rules of the time, we could sell fruit but not vegetables after 12.30 pm!) and there were a lot of rules strange to modern eyes. Bottles of soft drink were sold with a deposit paid on them. What was to happen to the deposits paid before the switch, but returned afterwards? But we managed to work through the first week and decimal currency soon became the norm.
I can remember being a kid and finding bottles to take back to get the refund. Good times cause it meant you could spend time with your face pressed against the glass of the lollie counter 😂
@@infin8ee I believe there was a shop in my area where they stacked the returned bottles in cases against their side fence. Apparently if you were tall enough you could reach over the fence and grab bottles from the top crate.
@@davidberriman5903 my father was in the army so whenever the men got together there was always beer bottles. For us kid's it meant a bonanza of returns
Five years later, in 1971, the UK and Ireland went decimal too. Their jingle was called Decimal Five. I was just graduating uni at that time and found the transition quite easy.
The tune is from 'Click Go The Shears', an old bush ballad about shearers, that was also based on an American Civil War song, 'Ring the Bell, Watchman'.
Everyone in Australia who was old enough to understand the change over, can remember the date due to that jungle. It was played and repeated very frequently on the TV and radio. And was as easy to remember, like any well made advert today, that you can recite fully.
This is the day I was born & next birthday, I'll be 58 years old. My Aunty used to call me the decimal point kid when I was younger.
Hi Ryan, you recognised the tune because it is from the famous Australian song Click Go the Shears, a song about shearing sheep. The lyrics are from an old poem, Click Go the Shears, Boys (the author is anonymous).
Yes there were halfpennies there were even quarter pennies called farthings. Have you ever heard of a penny farthing bicycle? It was called that because it had a big wheel at the front and a small wheel, at the back (like a penny and a farthing). Farthings were no longer used after 1960; just as, well or that bit of maths (math for the Americans) in the video would have been even more confusing 🤔
The jingle was new words to the song Click goes the Shears. I was in fourth grade in 1966 so I was able to learn the value of the new coins really fast. I remember it very well. Math was much easier using the dollars and cents. Our sixpence became 5 cents so we kids would go into the store and just buy three pence worth of sweets at a time so we would still get our 6 cents worth of candy.
I was a kid when this came in, and almost fell to my knee in thanks at the change. We had little cards that showed us the equivalent coin in the old to the new. This song is still in my head when a trivia question comes up.
Decimal currency came in the year I went into Grade 4, my Dad had been having a hard time teaching me the old - he & even the teacher said not to worry too much, not a lot of effort went into us getting it right at age 7/8. With my Mum explaining it over the years, I understand it easily now.
I remember this time. I was just a kid so wasn't dealing with money or shopping so didn't really impact me. One thing I do remember is price tags and signs all being $1.99, $2.99 etc etc. I soon learnt that was a trick to make you think it was a dollar cheaper at a quick glance.
I vaguely recall there was also a t.v campaign in the 1970s to help us transfer to metric in weather forcasting. Something like The temperate 20s, the thirsty 30s, the fiery 40s so we knew what a 24 degree was going to be like.
I was working in a bank & had to write hand ledger book for accounts and b was it much easier when decimal currency came in. We also had delivery of all notes & coins about a week before release date, so we could roll them by hand and in 10 bundles of to notes, folded in half with band holding them to ease of issue. We also had lots of people, especially teachers come in for 1 unit of each to show their students,
G'day Ryan, l was 9 years old when the currency changed and we sang that song every morning the month before it changed, I'll never forget that jingle, cheers mate, Neil.
I 'was' "alive back then" and I remember it all very well. I guess I'm old now. How could that possibly be?
Australians would know the tune as "Click Goes The Shears"
It's an old folk song about Shearing Sheep.
Or Click Go the Eels 😆 😂
I grew up with that song in my head and it’s still comes out occasionally. I was in form 1 the sixties and remember getting so excited when the bus driver gave us change in $ and Cents.
I remember doing homework in the 90s and sonething about this came up and my mum, born in the 50s, immediately started singing it. I guess it was a successful campaign.
I'm 66 and at school we learnt both the metric and imperial systems as well as the decimal system, with hindsight I consider myself most fortunate with such matters as I still can work with both.
The jingle is ANOTHER Aussie classic - "Click Go The Shears". 🤗
5c animal is an ECHIDNA.
This was a real blast from the past! 😁 I hope you enjoyed it...
M 🦘🏏😎
The imperial system was complicated.
One pound (quid) was equal to 20 shillings, one shilling was equal to 12 pence, and so one pound was equal to 240 pence. Also, one guinea was equivalent to 21 shillings.
Coins were half-penny (ha'penny), penny, threepence (thruppence or trey), sixpence (zac), shilling (10p, bob, deener), florin (20p, two bob) and crown (5 shillings, not minted much).
Posh shops didn't charge in pounds, their prices were in guineas.
Not to mention the farthing which was one quarter of a penny
@@Steve_P_B - Farthings were never struck as Commonwealth currency. The colonies had them though.
@@TenOrbital this is an Australian ad
@@Steve_P_B - I'm Australian in Australia and I know the film.
The Commonwealth of Australia never struck farthings. They were not part of the national coinage.
The pre-federation colonies (NSW, Victoria, etc) did have farthings but they were discontinued from 1910.
@@TenOrbital wrong, they lasted much longer than that, I have immediate family that remember it. Secondly the UK did also mint farthings.
The tune is from the old Australian song 'Click Go the Shears'.
I think it was 1974 Australia changed to metric system. All road signs in the country were changed in one night.
I bought my first car in early 1974 and it came with kilometres on the speedo. I was having to make quick conversions in my head to miles per hour until the change to decimal happened and all the signs were changed.
My father had a grocery store that delivered groceries. Customers would fill in an order book with their order. If I turned up at the shop, dad would often throw a bunch of these orders and tell me to add them up. Sometimes in school holidays I worked there as well. Adding up the orders in the old currency was not too difficult but required more time and care. When the decimal currency came in, it was a blessing. So much easier. One good thing to come out of it though, was I was very good at mathematics, winning occasional scholarships and bursaries for topping mathematics subjects. I doubt that would have happened without the very early practice I got at basic calculations. The metric system replaced the imperial one about 1973. I think also that growing up with the old currency, plus the imperial system, the complexity of calculations helped develop mathematic skills.
I was a toddler when that came out n my mum said I used to walk around singing it everytime I heard it. I actually still remember all the words today. 😂
The tune it's sung in is the same as the old Aussie song called click goes the shears.. I think could be wrong😅
The date "the fourteenth of February 1966 " is ingrained in my brain because of the jingle. Decimal currency is so much simpler but I still remember 12 pence = 1 shillings, etc, etc. if you listened to the song "Click Goes the Shears" you'd have to have them explained to you as there' s shearing terms in it.
I was born in the 70's & back in the days was the best of everything music movies sport living & peace
It was obviously very effective as I still remember every word of it to this day!
In 1971, Britain also decimalised. Though they still continued to call their notes pounds. However the pound (symbol "£") was divided into 100 pence. Where as just like in Australia, prior to Britain's decimalisation the pound was divided into 20 shillings, with each of 12 [old] pence; thus, there were 240 [old] pence to the pound.
Here in NZ we were charged 1D extra for a chilled drink. Gimee a coke. "King size or regular? regular "off the ice? no 'open it" no. I got some returns 9. "2 of those are chipped 7" OK "hang on I recognise those chipped bottles! "you little sod youve been reaching through the wire and taking my bottles" Those days were simpler?
Tune is to an Australian song Click Go The Shears which is about shearing the sheep.The 50c coin is no longer round it is hexagonal in shape.
I was 13 years old in 1966, first year high school [Sydney N.S.W.]. I recall the up coming entrepreneurs who were the first to get some coin in decimal currency from the tuck shop at recess, were selling a 1cent coin for threepence to those gullible enough to do it. Which gave a 50% mark up on the transaction.
That Australian public information film is brilliant, we in Britain had to wait until February 1971.
Pre Decimal we had The £ pound starling ... post Decimal The £ Pound Stirling was turned into Decimal by having a value of 100 new pence ... I remember all of that as I was coming up to my 6th birthday and we were primed in school well before The 15th of February 1971.
I still remember a couple of my Grandma's senior moments in the early 90s when I was a teenager. She liked to be called Nan-nan. In general she was pretty with it even when these moments happened when she was in her 80s. She forgot about inflation and thought she was being generous when it came to giving mum money to pay for food. One afternoon she was looking at a bill and trying to convert it from dollars to pounds, shillings and pence. She immigrated from Finland as a little girl during WWI. But unlike an elderly Italian lady I knew she never lost her bilingual abilities. I remember listening to her speaking on the phone to a Finnish relative once. It was amazing to listen to their are some incredibly long words in the Finnish language and it spoken at lighting fast speed. It's not uncommon to have at least 25 letters in a word. You have to be quite the linguist to even try learning Finnish.
Excuse me young man imagine some of us are still alive, I was 25 when decimal came in so much better than the old. The tune Click go the shears. Old times were not always happy and free, seems to me that some older people tend to look back with rose coloured glasses, I know that we had a lot freedom, just be home before dark or dinner.Hope little family are well and happy
My mother's over eighty and still alive too.
I used to love watching this on the telly back then.
What was really difficult at the time, was that 12 pence, a shilling, became 10 cents, so 2 pence= 2 cents, but also 3 pence 2 cents. Similarly a cent was "lost" at 7-8 pence. Many older people felt robbed at the time. I was 13 when decimal currency was introduced.
Brings back memories. I was in 4th grade. Remember it well. Most confusion was for some of the older folk working out change. Now I am one haha. No calculators. Initially old currency ran in tandem. As old currency it was banked it was withdrawn from circulation. Believe it or not there was also a halfpenny, with kangaroo (pronounced haypennie) and a farthing with a small bird on it, which was half a halfpenny. Had a farthing in a mixed coin bag but lost in a shift around 1993. You could also go to the milk bar around 1964 or so and buy a mixed bag of lollies for threepence (Thruppence with 3 stalks of wheat on it) and a big bag for sixpence. Some lollies were 8 for a penny! Used to drive the milk bar owners crazy. I’ll have one of them hmmm and one of them. Haha. Good memories.
My grandma saw this in 14th of February 1966🎵🎶
And she was just a teenager back then and yet she still remembers the song and she loves the song
And also in maths we were talking about the currency and I said about or I brought up about the song and that my grandma likes the song and then they start playing the video and some were dancing and like swerving left and right to it and it was fun and hilarious
I am ashamed ( not ashamed ) to say I stole a glass from my grandmother that was printed with the currency conversion. I’d seen the ad as a kid and thought it was cool. I’m now glad I did because it would have been chucked out and it’s now collectible 😊
That takes me back. I was 7 when we changed over. We were learning how to add pounds, shillings, and pence when we got to throw that away for something much simpler. There were 12 pence to the shilling and 20 shillings to the pound. We also had the halfpenny (pronounced "haypenny") to deal with. So, something costs £2/6/5½ and someone passes you a £5 note. What's the change?
Decimalisation is simply going to 10 based units. The US has had decimalised currency for so long you haven't had to differentiate. Your currency is decimalised but you don't have to think about it.
When Australia decimalised its currency, the conversion rate was the question. £1 became $2, 1s became 10 cents, sixpence became 5 cents, and the penny became 1 cent. As a kid on pocket money of a shilling a week, I remember trying to figure out how to game the exchange rate. 😂
When the UK decimalised their currency, they went a different route. £1 stayed £1 and the penny increased in value accordingly. This is why the exchange rate between the Australian dollar and UK pound floats around $1 = 50p mark.
The round 50c didn't last long. It was bigger than the 20c coin but not enough to avoid confusion. It was replaced with the current 12 sided (dodecagonal) shape a few years later.
I still remember this Australian jingle from when we in the UK went decimal 15th February '71. Australia's 14th February 1966 still stuck in my head. Over here the Jingles were by the Group The Scaffold which were repeated one liners. Give more get change. also Use you old money in 6 penny lots. and 6d is 2½ new pence. etc. Could easily go back to the old system in an instance.
The jingle is of a old Australian folk song called click goes the shears. I don't know much about pounds, shillings, and pents. I was born on the 15 of February 1966.
Just before the change over, I was a kid at school, who had been sent to the back of the classroom for some minor transgression and was denied by the class teacher from seeing plastic mock-ups of the coins, he had brought in to show the class. Little did the teacher know, my older brother was bank teller and I seen the real thing.
The creature on the 5¢ coin is an echidna also known as a spiny anteater, a mammal that lays eggs.
US currency ( US$ ) is actual decimal currency , and decimal currency is a metric unit for money
Strange how the US was brave enough to break away from their colonial shackles and adopt decimal currency but wasn't brave enough to abandon the imperial system of measurement and preferred to cling to its colonial heritage.
@@petertimbrell1964 Never underestimate the exeptionalism of the USAs ruling class. They'll do decimal currency because they "invented" it but adopt something superior from outside of the only country that matters? Forget it.
@@Tasmantor America didn't "invent" the decimal currency, the Chinese have been using a decimal currency since the 2nd century BCE and Russia since 1704. The US adopted it in 1792.
The worldwide use of decimal currency is not at all the Metric system. There are no metric standards for currency, with the value changing with exchange rates.
Unlike the metric standards of length , weight, time and energy etc.
Eg a Metre length is defined as being the same all around the world by all the countries adopting the metric system. There would be chaos without those metric standard.
Whereas Dollars from the USA, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Hong Kong etc are all different values and change every few seconds compared to each other as do all decimal currencies.
Widespread confusion calling decimal currency metric.
@@johnd8892 Decimal currency *is* based on the metric system, the value of these currencies depends on a lot of factors but it is still a decimal currency, at the end of the day there are still 100c in a dollar. It's much like any measurement we use, they are all based on a constant. Everyone thought the speed of light was a constant but it has been found that it does speed up and slow down. Likewise Planck's constant, the value has been calculated over time to different values, albeit minute differences. Planck's constant is used to calculate the kg and even though it may fluctuate a miniscule amount, at the end of the day, 1 kg still has 1000g.
I was turning 7 when these changes happened so dollars and cents are easy to decipher. Around 1970 we changed to metric for measurements but for a long time inches and feet were still used. Funnily enough inches and feet are sometimes still used but less as the years go by.
Your right - our currency was under the imperial system. Not only our currency was changed to the decimal system but also our imperial measuring system was changed to metric in 1970.
I was 4 years old when this was on the TV and i remember it in black and white. Going to the Lollie shop with a six-pence and a five-cent piece was confusing for a young kid. We for years after got a Sixpence in our Christmas pudding even into the 70's 5 cents echidna 10 cent Lyrebird 20 cent Platypus 50 cents originally coat of arms
The pre-decimal currency was based on the British Imperial currency, which in turn was based on the system of ancient Roman coinage derived from weights and measures of dry goods. The pound symbol (£), for instance, evolved from the representation from the Latin libras, or weights of a scale.
The UK kept the same system of imperial currency until the decimalization of the British pound in 1971.
I remember being given my first five cent coin as a very small girl. It was so shiny and so pretty with the little echidna curled up. It is still my favourite coin.
Song originally was “Click goes the Shears”.
The jingle is based on Click Goes the Shears which is an old Australian song.
If you think that that example was difficult you should try long division (there were no calculators). I was in the school system up to 1968 and once you got the hang of it there wasn't a problem.
1966 was whole different world back then young fellow, long before you weren't even a sparkle in your old man's eyes
The Imperial Pounds, shillings and pennies worked on the multiplication 12. Decimal is divisions of ten just like metric, doing away with need of multiplication of 11 or 12. Integrating with most International currencies. The round 50cent was sterling silver. Worth loads more now.
G'day from Australia! it's a song called 'Click Goes the Shears'.
I was there ... in grade 2 at primary school. I got all excited to get my change at the tuck shop in decimal currency but they had run out.
G'day Mate! As a septuagenarian I was around when the changeover was made. Actually there were limited coins released as of 1964 so as to accustom people to them...Fun Fact:- That round 50 cent coin had a high silver content and within 12 months of release the silver content was worth almost 70 cents so the government quietly withdrew them and minted a new 12 sided cupronickel-nickel 50 cent coin... Cheers!
It was the imperial system before we went to a decimal / metric system. We also used to have inches, feet and yards etc. back then too.
I lived through this as a late teen. I found the currency conversion quite easy to get a grasp on, because I used it multiple times per day. Later conversions (of distance and weight) were more difficult, because normal living calls for their use much less frequently.
Yes, it does depend on how much you use it. I still have trouble with height & if asked will probably guess it in feet & inches.
The jingle was from “click go the shears”, a traditional Australian bush shearing tune.
The switch from pounds, shillings and pence (LSD) was a con job on the Australian people. Our pre-decimal silver coins were actually (mostly) silver. There is zero silver in the silver decimal coins. The exception was the 1966 round 50c coin which was 80% silver. They quickly withdrew them from circulation and all 50c coins produced from 1967 onwards are a copper nickel alloys, as are all other “silver” denominations.
So we all used to carry real money (silver) in our pockets. Since the 1966 silver swindle we now carry mostly junk metal.
But even that debasement has been further debased. Thanks to inflation (which is really just currency debasement), the coins now cost more to produce than the face value.
Next con job will probably be to withdraw cash and coins altogether and replace them with CBDC which is just numbers on a screen. Imaginary money. About as real as fairy dust and unicorn farts.
Happy Arvo Ryan! 👍 🎶 On the 14th of February 1966! 🎶 I think the original song went like this: "Click go the shears boys, click, click, click, wide is his gaze and his hands move quick, the ringer looks around and he's beaten by a blow and curses the old ..? At least the original words sung by Slim Dusty! 🤔 You should check out how actual pounds, shillings and pence work sometime! 😂 They taught the kids first, so they could teach the adults! 😁
lol, Slim Dusty...you need to do more research before posting rubbish.
"wide is his blow' - meaning the strike with the shears
@@dickwilliam3793 Takashi Otowa wrote it, Slim Dusty performed it! 😏 It's not "rubbish", ?? red-bellied Joe!?
@@xymonau2468 Not bad for out of my head, I learned it at school! Shearer's slang is a mystery to me generally!
YES
This happened during my first year at university - so all of my elementary and secondary education was wasted on calculations (called ‘making change’) in “the old money”. When we also went decimal with lengths, weights and volumes the imperial measurements were all referred to as “the old money” - like “how tall is he in the old money?”
You were in "elementary" school in 1966????
@@warrenturner397 no - I started university in 1966 - everything I had learned before then (in elementary and secondary school) was in the British/ Oz version of imperial
I was 15, still at school, so I was glad to not have to do maths using £.s.d. any more. When Dollar Bill was adding up in his demonstration he didn’t mention guineas which were worth £1/1/- or 21 shillings. Shops often advertised in guineas rather than pounds to mislead you into thinking it wasn’t as expensive, much like advertising at $5.99 instead of $6. When it was in guineas it was 5% dearer than the same number of pounds.
The changeover was relatively simple. It helped that most of the new coins were the same size and colour as the old ones. The cent was much smaller than a penny and they introduced a copper 2 cent coin to replace the silver threepence but the rest were similar to the old money. Of course with a shilling being 12 pennies and being replaced by 10 cents it meant some juggling. Both twopence and threepence were worth 2 cents and 7 pence and 8 pence were worth 8 cents if I remember right. Because of that people did all sorts of funny stuff to get the extra penny.
Thank goodness I was born in 1970 , I was scratching my head when he was talking about pounds, pence & shillings….i remember my mum trying to explain ‘old’ money to me …I was just as confused then
Hi Ryan,
RUclips 'Click go the shears'
It's a lovely old song about shearing sheep. If you click on the right one it will give you the lyrics too (Kids - great Aussie songs)
A 'bare bellied yoe' is a ewe with very little wool on the belly so its much quicker to shear.
The Bowen technique for shearing sheep now used world wide was invented in New Zealand by Godfrey Bowen.
Pounds Shillings and Pence were not just used in Australia but in the UK. As the video noted, Austrlia converted in '66.
Australia also converted from Imperial measurement to the metric measurement system in 1970 by an act of Parliament, while the US has remained with the Imperial System because of the ongoing resistance of older Americans to change when in fact the metric system would be so much easier.
My dad was a bank manager and when they delivered the new currency it was in an armoured van accompanied by a military armoured car with armed soldiers. My father could add pounds shillings and pence in a listing faster than I could key it in to a calculator.
This was 10 years before I was born and 4 years before my mum, dad and siblings migrated to Australia
Note the world map showing Papua New Guinea as using pounds. PNG was a territory of Australia at the time, having been taken from Germany after WWI. PNG became independent in the seventies.
It's the tune to Click Go the Sheers". Old Aussie bush/folk song
My grandmother had a set of cups that came out at the same time which explained the changes. Things like having 2 places after the decimal point and that the dollar sign did not go next to the decimal point, you have to use a zero such as $0.33 not $.33.
The penny used to have another coin that was a quarter of a Penny. It was called a Farthing and I remember my Dad giving me some when I was small. If you had 1 pound note and 1 shilling it was called a Guinea. Things were often sold in Guinea’s and I never understood why.
A Guinea was a way a seller could get 5% more but making it seem a smaller amount in pounds.
99 Guineas seeming a lot cheaper than 104 Pounds.
Shout out.... I was there during the pounds to dollars change over. I was 8 years old at the time.
The song is the Australian ballad "Click Go The Shears". After learning pounds shillings and pence my entire school life, my second wage was in decimal currency.
I can remember towards the end of the school year in 1964 we started to learn decimal currency so we had the full year of 1965 to learn it before it came in.
apparently the 50-cent coin had its shape changed to 12-sided three years after its introduction
I was 6.5 years old at the time and remember spending the penny and shilling and sixpence at shop! also remember the jingle! $1 and $2 came out in 1980's. also, 50c was made with more sides since it got confusing with 20c
I was 13 and in second year high school when the new currency came in. In primary school I had to learn addition, subtraction, multiplication and division of pounds, shillings and pence, with halfpennies and farthings. I remember struggling with long division of pounds, shillings and pence. It was torturous. The new money looked and felt like play money at first and it always felt to me as if 5 and 10 c just didn’t buy as much as sixpence and a shilling.
6:58 yes they are big. I’m Australian and I got my hands on the coins that Americans use. I was surprised how small and thin they are compared to Australian coins
G'day, I was nine when decimal currency came in. The whole family waited for my father to come home with his pay packet so we could see the new money. He came home with 38 Pounds and we were so disappointed. There were no calculators so everyone did the maths in their heads. Housewives did all the shopping while the husbands were at work. No shopping past midday on Saturday.