This short was produced in colour but it screened in black-and-white on television because colour television didn’t arrive on Australian screens until 1975.
There was a huge public education campaign in the year leading up to the change. Arguably the most well-loved piece of publicity is the musical animated short featuring Dollar Bill.
Taking advantage of the natural rhyme of ‘pounds, shillings and pence’ becoming ‘dollars and cents’, composer Ted Roberts wrote a jingle to the tune of the folk song ‘Click go the shears’.
After being shown on television night after night from April 1965 until the beginning of change-over in February 1966, the catchy song was well known by Australians. In September 1965 the Decimal Currency Board reported receiving 500 fan letters from children for Dollar Bill.
The identity of the actor who voiced Dollar Bill was kept secret, but today we know he was voiced by actor, comedian and newsreel narrator Kevin Golsby (Division 4, Kingswood Country and Marco Polo Junior Versus The Red Dragon). Actor and voice-over narrator Ross Higgins (Kingswood Country, The Naked Vicar Show and Richmond Hill) voiced the man instructed by Dollar Bill.
