That crime story, is urban legend here on EU.
As long as there has been Euro, Au has been equal currency.

As long as purchase is under money laundry limit (some 20kE per day I think) there is not any record what so ever.
Then just multiply how many shop there is even on mediocre town selling this element and put it power of winos who will perform shopping with price of vodka bottle.
So in one day on one mediocre town, there is grand potential to migrate colored paper to another currency.
If need to get it outside EU, next plane to Singapore. Fill the paper (sure, carrying lot of Austria Philharmoniker), choose the red line and show original recipe.
There is conversion fee from paper to gold and from gold to paper, which nobody really criminal mind does not mind, since something like 1,5% per transaction.

But it is absolute unbearable for those, who has own/another peoples honest money. You cannot pay pensions or food bill on gold.
Baling colored paper to fox hole will yield some interest since current deflation, so is actually reasonable investment.

They did face this very same challenge on Japan around 1980's, after some muddy field, size of stamp (gravel under Imperial palace) did exceed value of California.
Government did donate free money for every citizen on form of coupons, but everybody as thump rule, did just hide those for bad days under mattress or something.
Honestly, where the heck they would need use couple of hundreds, since everybody was already millionaire.
Sure they did not have oil, fertilizer, uranium or anything to expand their living standard from middle age (it was really crappy time on Japan), but it of course was not a problem, because rest of world, merrily switch their wealth to Japanese colored paper.

But will rest of the world obey as blindly European colored paper, is not so clear.

https://youtu.be/aKsOwJ8AGWo

That sounds like some good engineering, although it sounds like it did give you at least one heart pounding moment. Did you ever find out what malfunctioned to cause the brakes to engage ?
Cheers

Things have been quite busy here. I have finished putting in the garden as of last Tuesday. I got the pumpkins, squash, gourds, and tomatoes all planted, just in time for the rains to start. We got about 2 inches (6 cm) over the last several days. It was well needed as it had become quite dry. I have been harvesting asparagus and rhubarb. The weatherhas almost been too good for the asparagus as it grows alomost too fast to harvest unless you keep an eye on it everyday. School will be ending this week, so my volunteer hours there will no longer be necessary, freeing up some time to get some projects done I have been putting off, like getting rid of junk I haven't used in twenty or more years. With the warm and humid weather just keeping the grass mowed will use up considerable time. There will be no staying idle here.
Cheers

Welcome aboard, glad to have you. Crunch on.
Cheers

If there is any danger of it rotting and falling on any thing I would cut it down...