‘Vomit-like’ Australian $5 note unveiled

It may be the smallest-denominated Australian dollar banknote, but a new design for the Aus$5 bill attracted an outsized amount of criticism when it was unveiled Tuesday, with detractors calling it “hideous” and “like vomit.”

n-NOTE-large570The note, which will replace its more bland predecessor from September 1, features a yellow Prickly Moses wattle flower and a colourful Eastern Spinebill native bird. 

“Each banknote in the new series will depict a different species of Australian wattle and a native bird within a number of the elements,” Reserve Bank of Australia governor Glenn Stevens said in a statement. 

“The designs are the culmination of a process of extensive consultation with subject-matter experts and the cash-handling industry, as well as qualitative research involving focus groups.” 

But critics — from social media users to bird-lovers — were quick to express their disdain. 

“Our new fivers look like vomit,” one user wrote on Twitter, while another quipped: “A thousand monkeys with a thousand versions of Photoshop could never come up with something as hideous as the new Australian $5 note.”