AUD exchange rate?

in article GLoNb.4597$Xq2.494@fed1read07, 4000 psi at
wrote on 1/15/04 12:34 AM:

buy some now its unlikely to get much better than this


Poor advice from Australia - the spread on cash exchange AUD-CAD is huge -
around 5% as I recall - because of the low volumes involved. In fact, on a
cash basis it's cheaper for me to buy US dollars in Canada and then convert
USD to AUD in Australia because of the smaller margins. Plus, of course,
you have cash lying around doing nothing for half a year, which is worth
around 2 or 3% in itself.

As I've said a couple times before, my personal preference is to have a
small amount of cash (usually left over from another trip) in case the cash
machine is down, and put everything on credit card or cash advances from an
ATM (the margins are smaller, around 2%).