It was just lying there on the footpath while I was out walking. I hope it’s a real one, and not counterfeit. The colours look a bit odd. It’s not all green. There are red bits and blueish bits too. And the reverse looks almost as though it has faded.
Like this on top?
It’s mine! I lost it! I can prove it! It’s got a picture of Grant on it!
Yes. So it is real after all. It looked fake when I first saw it lying there. I suppose we’ve had the plastic notes for such a long time now that paper notes seem instinctively wrong.
Hooray for me! But I bet my bank charges me a whopping fee to convert it.
$50 US. That’s only $53.67 Australian. If your moneychangers are anything like the ones at our airport (who charge about 7.5% as far as I can tell), you might get less than $50 Australian back. I was shocked when I read how close the Australian dollar is to the US dollar these days.
Edit: it’s $49.22 Canadian.
Even though you are not supposed to send cash money through the mail, my ex used to sometimes allow Americans to send him cash payments for eBay auctions, which he would in turn mail back to pay for auctions that he’d won from American sellers. If you do online trading, this might give you the best “exchange rate” possible (or, if it vanishes in the post, the worst).
The last time I bought something from Australia, the US$ was worth almost twice the AU$.
The US dollar has been falling against all major currencies recently of course, but the Australian dollar is being pushed up in value by the continuing commodities boom. And interest rates here are at an 11 year high. The RBA is trying to dampen down inflation in the booming economy. So foreign capital is flowing in, also helping to push up the value of the Australian dollar.
You could just try hanging onto it, to see if things improve with the exchange rate. Might not happen soon, but it could happen.
Dress in shorts, sandals, and a blinding Hawaiian shirt. Take the banknote and your SO to a middle-of-the-road restaurant in a tourist area. Have a modest yet satisfying meal. When time comes to pay, put on an American accent, swagger up to the cash desk, and offer to pay in ‘real money’. 
As long as its not this Grant 
Nowhere near as interesting or cool as finding a $50 note, but I find U.S coins here in Canberra all the time. I have heaps and heaps of dimes and pennies and quite a few quarters. I wouldn’t have thought Canberra would get enough American tourists or even diplomatic visitors to produce the amount of lost change I have found.
How much do they resemble Aussie coins? Here in the States, I often find the odd foreign coin mixed in with regular US coins, and it’s hard to spot the difference at a glance.
Hardly at all. I do see the occasional dime or quarter, but mostly it’ the old-style NZ coins or British coins, which are the same sizes as ours. They are everywhere, to the point where they are pretty much accepted in a store, even if the cashier notices them, and if they refuse it, they are seen as being uptight.
US coins do tend to stand out as odd-sized.
Yeah, the closest resemblance would be between the dime and our 5c piece, and even then you quickly spot that dime is a little smaller.
Congrats on finding money on the street!
Ages ago, young and poor in NYC, I saw a white envelope on the street and picked it up. It had $500 in twenty dollar bills. No name, no nothing. Just cash in a white envelope.
It was a happy day.
Check the shrubbery for the murdered body of its previous owner, first.
$50 bills just do not get lost.
I found $300 (2 x $100, 2 x $50) on a sidewalk in Alexandria, Virginia a few years ago.
Cunctator, i’m visiting Australia in July. Keep it until then, and i’ll give you the going exchange rate for it, with no exchange fee.
No shrubbery. No murdered bodies.
It was lying face down on the footpath. Heaps of people must have walked past it and done what I almost did - assume that it was a fake, or some sort of promotional flyer for a shop or something like that.
Also, get 50- US$1 banknotes and wrap the $50 around the outside of the cash wad. Put a giant money clip around the whole thing while in line making sure that the maximum number of people sees this cash stash. Be sucking on a toothpick using loud hissing sounds, while you pay the bill and pull the clip off.
Lay the $50 on the counter, and stuff one of the $1 bills in the cashier’s pocket and give him a wink. Tell him you liked your “shrimp on the barbie” in a bad, fake Aussie accent.