New $100 note is unveiled with new security features that will make it almost impossible to counterfeit
- 'Jolly Green Giants' get a makeover with new advanced security holograms
- Colourful owls flap their wings and shimmer in the light when you move the note
- New $100 notes to debut later this year, old notes remain legal tender
- Cash machine makers, retailers, get first copies to callibrate their machines
The Reserve Bank of Australia has released its new $100 note design with an owl whose wings change colour and a wattle branch that glows pink in UV light.
The new $100 note, affectionately known as the Jolly Green Giant, will go into circulation later this year.
It is the last of Australia's polymer notes to get a makeover in the redesign program, and it sports the latest colourful and tactile security features to prevent counterfeiting.
The new note has a clear window running through it with advanced security holograms, but still stars Australia's greatest opera soprano Dame Nellie Melba
Soldier and engineer Sir John Monash who was instrumental in building Melbourne's Shrine of Remembrance is still on the note along with the shrine he helped build
There is a bright green owl in mid flight, landing on a flourescent pink wattle branch that you can only see glowing under UV light.
If you tilt the note you can see a three-dimensional fan with colourful hologram lines that seem to change colour as you move.
An Australian Masked Owl makes its debut on the note with hologram rainbow wings that change colour, and another hologram owl flaps its wings and changes colour when the light changes.
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Another new addition is Australia's national floral emblem, the Golden Wattle, which lines the edges of the note's clear window.
The clear window is an advanced security feature that runs like a river through the note from top to bottom and holds the difficult-to-fake hologram elements such as the flying owl.
The long edges of the bank note have five raised bumps so that blind people can recognise them easily, and the number '100' is both raised and distinctively textured so you can feel when it's real.
The famous Australians featured on the existing note are still there in the new design.
The bright green owl and pink wattle only glows in UV light, also known as 'black light'
A tactile bar of five raised bumps helps blind people know when they've got a real note
The rainbow on the wings of the Australian Masked Owl shimmers and changes in the light
On one side is Dame Nellie Melba, a world-famous soprano who sang in Australia, Europe and the US in the late 19th Century and early 20th Century.
On the flip side is soldier, engineer and civic leader Sir John Monash who was instrumental in building the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne.
The Shrine of Remembrance features on the note with a hologram 100 inside it that changes direction when you move the note.
The Reserve Bank said on Monday it is working with banknote equipment manufacturers and retailers to make sure their machines can handle the new note.
The bank has distributed early notes to let the machine manufacturers and owners update their equipment.
Existing $100 banknotes will remain legal tender and can continue to be used.
Australia's $100 bill was the only banknote that hadn't been replaced since the mid-1990s, with the Reserve Bank confirming cost was the reason.
The threat of counterfeiting and the cost of replacing paper notes encouraged the Reserve Bank of Australia to phase out paper money and replace it with tougher polymer between 1992 and 1996.
The RBA said replacing paper money with polymer notes had saved taxpayers $1billion during the past 27 years, as they were spared the costs of having to replace worn-out notes.
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