SIS, if you look at the reason that the AUD was so high, you’ll see that it was being ‘artificially’ kept at that level by the government. The other countries in the world (I read something about this somewhere, but have no idea where []) were no longer taking us seriously on what our dollar was worth.
So the Govt made the decision to let the currency be a ‘fair market’ currency, which is why it then dropped quite substantially. I had a friend tell me he was living in the States at the time (Navy guy), and he really wished he had of had ‘fair warning’, cos he would have bought all the USD he could with what he had. As it was, the cost of living dramatically increased for these guys who lived overseas but are paid in AUD.