1 Pound, Fanning Island Plantations

Schwan/Boling #1541

The Fanning Island Plantations, Limited issued a 1£ banknote to alleviate a shortage of Australian dollars. According to World War II Remembered, "... in 1942 an American army task force moved onto the island......soldiers rapidly absorbed the available supply of Australian currency in circulation." A quantity of 3,000 banknotes were ordered printed in Honolulu by plantation manager R. G. Garrett but not all may have been issued.  According to a specialist in these items "very few were probably issued as complete notes but were later cut in half and used as theatre tickets. We are pretty sure but not positive that the numbers on the notes started at 1000. Therefore the original shipment probably had serial numbers from 1000 to roughly 4000."

The left half of the bi-sected note was hand written with the value of 1 Shilling (1/-) while the right half became a 2 Shilling (2/-) value. These theater tickets are scarce, however the complete un-bisected notes are rare with only about 33 pieces identified