The 1823 Hobart Town Four Spanish Dollar Promissory Note is an exceptional survivor from the earliest years of Van Diemen’s Land. Issued during a chronic shortage of official coinage, such notes underpinned trade in the fledgling settlement of Hobart Town. Denominated in Spanish dollars — the dominant international currency of the era — it reflects the improvised monetary system that sustained Australia’s frontier economy. Scarce and historically significant, it offers collectors a tangible connection to Tasmania’s convict-period commerce.

This example is signed by Thomas James Lempriere (1796–1852), a British colonial administrator who arrived in Van Diemen’s Land in 1822. Lempriere served in the Commissariat Department at Maria Island, Sarah Island, Hobart and Port Arthur, rising to Assistant Commissary General. Beyond his official duties, he was a noted diarist of the penal settlements, a self-taught portrait and landscape artist, and a pioneering naturalist whose tidal records at Port Arthur represent some of the earliest sea-level observations in the Southern Hemisphere.

Note: reinforced with archival tape on the back of the note.