In Gold / The Australian story
A Sound-Money Calculator · AUD
The Australian dollar, measured in gold
The price of gold didn't get more expensive. The value of the Aussie dollar fell.
The Australian series on this site begins in 1971 — the year the world's monetary anchor was cut — and it tells a story usually hidden behind a currency with a strong reputation. Against the US dollar, the AUD has often looked sound. Against gold, it has never stopped shrinking.
Pegged, managed, floated
Through the seventies the AUD was pegged — first to sterling's legacy arrangements, then the US dollar, then a trade-weighted basket with a crawling peg from 1976. Inflation ran to double digits while the exchange rate was administered; the debasement was set by committee. Then, in December 1983, the Hawke government — Paul Keating as treasurer — floated the dollar. From that day the A$ gold price became a daily market verdict on the currency, and the verdict has compounded: 91.8% of the A$'s value gone since the float, measured in gold. A$100 from 1983 is $1,223 held as gold — Australian CPI admits only $398.
Decade by decade
| Year | A$100 bought | CPI says today | In gold today | A$ value lost (in gold) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1971 | 2.81 oz | $1,355 | $16,169 | 99.4% |
| 1975 | 0.81 oz | $882 | $4,687 | 97.9% |
| 1980 | 0.19 oz | $534 | $1,068 | 90.6% |
| 1983 | 0.21 oz | $398 | $1,223 | 91.8% |
| 1990 | 0.2 oz | $245 | $1,171 | 91.5% |
| 2000 | 0.21 oz | $197 | $1,197 | 91.6% |
| 2010 | 0.08 oz | $146 | $433 | 76.9% |
| 2020 | 0.04 oz | $121 | $225 | 55.5% |
Every row links to its full year page. A$ gold spot $5,761/oz, as of 2026-08-02.
The median home, weighed
Take the calculator's own 1990 preset: a median Australian home at roughly A$120,000. At 1990's average gold price of $492/oz, that house cost about 244 oz of gold. The same 244 oz today is worth $1,405,202 — which is to say: measured in gold, much of three decades of "house price growth" is the dollar falling, not the house rising. Run your own figures in the calculator.
The post-2020 chapter
In 2020 the RBA joined the QE club — bond purchases and the Term Funding Facility — and the A$ gold price more than doubled from its 2019 level to successive record highs. Measured in gold, the Australian dollar's post-2020 record is the worst stretch of the floated era. The 2020 page carries the numbers.
Continue: every year in AUD · the float, 1983 · why 1971 is where it starts · methodology.
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