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Just two examples in Australian poetry of the use of the term dollar, when no such coin existed, are to be found in Lawson's Booth's Drum (1915): Till they sent their prettiest lassies - and they broke our centre there. So that, moderately sober, we could stand to hear them sing - And we'd chaff their Testifiers, and throw quids into the ring. (Never less than bobs or 'dollars' - sometimes quids into the ring.) and in C J Dennis's poem Hitched which appears in the Sentimental Bloke collection for which Lawson wrote the foreword in 1915: At last Doreen an' me we gits away, An' leaves 'em doin' nothin' to the scran. (We're honey-moonin' down beside the Bay.) I gives a 'arf a dollar to the man Wot drives the cab; an' like two kids we ran ... Australians have been using the term 'dollar' since the days of early white settlement: beginning with the Spanish dollar, through the short years of the holey dollar, then the 137 years of the holey dollar's value being used for five shillings worth of coins, until the present time. It is incredible that the term used for the value of five shillings lived for 137 years in the language of many Australians, though there was no accompanying coin. |
 caricature of Henry Lawson by political cartoonist Sir David Low. Both worked for The Bulletin. David Low was also a good friend of C.J. Dennis |