Establishing a stable and acceptable currency is an important part of any community and this was certainly a challenge for the early settlement leaders.
Rum as a Currency
- The use of rum as a currency began around 1790. Rum was brought into the colony and controlled by a small number of people who became very rich.
- The problem with rum as a currency was that many workers were paid in rum and, instead of using it to buy the goods and services they needed, they drank it.
- The trade in rum grew and grew until it became the most popular form of currency.
- In the very first days of the colony of New South Wales, the generally recognized medium of exchange was nothing else, but barter — rum, corn, and wheat were the principal things used as currency, and from the beginning, rum was the great circulating medium.
- The wages of laborers were set down as so many gallons of rum, rewards were paid in it, and it is actually on record that a wife was purchased from her husband for four gallons of the red and ardent spirit.
- When Governor King took over command in 1800 he was startled to learn how varying and exorbitant was the value of this commodity — he found that spirit which had been imported for 10p a gallon was being retailed for £2.
- Everybody traded in it. Even the construction of the church was partly paid for in rum, and admission to the first theatre established in Sydney could be obtained for a nobbler (dram of alcoholic spirit).
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