The Australian Currency
When Lewis the Lion first arrived in Australia, he was quite shocked as just how expensive everything seemed to be. He’d thought that New Zealand was expensive but not compared to Australia! The reason for this is that during his time of travel in Australia, the Australian dollar was very strong and very strong against the pound. In other words you get less for your money when you convert it into the local currency.
He noticed that in Australia there was a high standard of living and that jobs were generally very well paid. That’s great if you live and work in Australia but not so good when you’re a traveller like Lewis the Lion. For example, the daily cost of WIFI access for Lewis the Lion in hostels was $8 and the average hostel stay was $28 a day. (Although in some of he major cities you could expect to pay much more, e.g. in Sydney and Melbourne it was more than $45 a night!). A typical coffee, (one of Lewis the Lion’s favourites became a flat white!) was roughly $4.
Like in New Zealand, Lewis the Lion discovered that prices were rounded to the nearest 10 cents. (The Australian dollar has hundred cents in a dollar. Lewis the Lion particularly liked the $1 coin as it often had a kangaroo on it and the 50 cent coin reminded him of the 50 pence coin back in the UK!).
He noticed that the conversion rates were quite close to the American dollar so,
£1 = $1.5 i.e. one and a half times the pound
so, 50 pence = 75 cents
and £2 = $3 and so on.
Or conversely, $1 = 65p
so, $2 = £1.30 and so on.
On a day to day basis, he was glad that Helen had a conversion app on her phone to convert values quickly. However, what was really useful was that he devised a chart with some of the main values like this:
Pound £ (GBP) – Australian dollar $ (AUD)
10 p = 15 cents
20 p = 30 cents
50 p =
£1 =
£2 =
£5 =
£10 =
£20 =
AUD – GBP
10 cents = 6.5 p
20 cents =
50 cents =
$1 = 65 p
$2 =
$5 =
$10 =
$ 20 =
$50 =
Can you help Lewis to fill in the missing values on this chart?
