Australian coins refers to the

coins A coin is a small object, usually round and flat, used primarily as a medium of exchange or legal tender. They are standardized in weight, and produced in large quantities at a mint in order to facilitate trade. They are most often issued by ...

which are or were in use as Australian

currency A currency is a standardization of money in any form, in use or circulation as a medium of exchange, for example banknotes and coins. A more general definition is that a currency is a ''system of money'' in common use within a specific envi ...

. During the early days of the colonies that formed Australia, foreign as well as British currency was used, but in 1910, a decade after federation, Australian coins were introduced. Australia used pounds, shillings and pence until 1966, when it adopted the decimal system with the Australian dollar divided into 100 cents.

First coins

For many years after the first Australian colony,

New South Wales New South Wales (commonly abbreviated as NSW) is a States and territories of Australia, state on the Eastern states of Australia, east coast of :Australia. It borders Queensland to the north, Victoria (state), Victoria to the south, and South ...

(NSW), was founded in 1788, it did not have its own currency and had to rely on the coins of other countries. During the early days of the colony, commodities such as wheat were sometimes used as a currency because of the shortage of coins. Also many transactions were carried out using promissory notes or a barter system, which included trafficking in alcohol, known as 'rum currency', a system disbanded when Macquarie became governor on 1 January 1810. Spanish dollars were sometimes cut into quarters, and then into 2/3 and 1/3 segments, with the 2/3 segments (1/6 of original coin) being "shillings" and the 1/3 segments (1/12 of original coin) "sixpences" In 1791 Governor Phillip of New South Wales fixed the value of the Spanish dollar to equal five shillings. Under the decree of 19 November 1800 by the governor

Philip Gidley King Captain Philip Gidley King (23 April 1758 – 3 September 1808) was a Royal Navy officer and colonial administrator who served as the governor of New South Wales from 1800 to 1806. When the First Fleet arrived in January 1788, King was detai ...

, the following eleven coins were legal tender for the exchange value of: *Gold Johanna (Portugal coin of 12800 Reis) = £4/0/- (four pounds) *Gold Half Johanna (Portugal coin of 6400 Reis) = £2/0/- (two pounds *

Guinea Guinea, officially the Republic of Guinea, is a coastal country in West Africa. It borders the Atlantic Ocean to the west, Guinea-Bissau to the northwest, Senegal to the north, Mali to the northeast, Côte d'Ivoire to the southeast, and Sier ...

= £1/2/- (One pound and two shillings) *Gold Mohur = £1/17/6 (one pound, 17 shillings and sixpence). *

Spanish dollar The Spanish dollar, also known as the piece of eight (, , , or ), is a silver coin of approximately diameter worth eight Spanish reales. It was minted in the Spanish Empire following a monetary reform in 1497 with content fine silver. It w ...

= 5 shillings. *

Ducat The ducat ( ) coin was used as a trade coin in Europe from the later Middle Ages to the 19th century. Its most familiar version, the gold ducat or sequin containing around of 98.6% fine gold, originated in Venice in 1284 and gained wide inter ...

= 9/6 (9 shillings 6 pence). *

Rupee Rupee (, ) is the common name for the currency, currencies of Indian rupee, India, Mauritian rupee, Mauritius, Nepalese rupee, Nepal, Pakistani rupee, Pakistan, Seychellois rupee, Seychelles, and Sri Lankan rupee, Sri Lanka, and of former cu ...

= 2/6 (2 shillings and 6 pence). *

Pagoda A pagoda is a tiered tower with multiple eaves common to Thailand, Cambodia, Nepal, India, China, Japan, Korea, Myanmar, Vietnam, and other parts of Asia. Most pagodas were built to have a religious function, most often Buddhist, but some ...

= 8/- (8 shillings). . *

Dutch Guilder The guilder (, ) or florin was the currency of the Netherlands from 1434 until 2002, when it was replaced by the euro. The Dutch name was a Middle Dutch adjective meaning 'golden', and reflects the fact that, when first introduced in 1434, its ...

= 2/- (2 shillings). *

English shilling The English shilling was a silver coin of the Kingdom of England, when first introduced known as the testoon. A shilling was worth twelve pence, and there were 20 shillings to the pound sterling. The English shilling was introduced in the 16th ...

= 1/1 (1 shilling and 1 penny). *Copper coin of 1 oz = 2 pence. The settlers did have some

George III George III (George William Frederick; 4 June 173829 January 1820) was King of Great Britain and King of Ireland, Ireland from 25 October 1760 until his death in 1820. The Acts of Union 1800 unified Kingdom of Great Britain, Great Britain and ...

one-penny coins, which were referred to as "Cartwheel pennies". These were the first British coins to be officially exported to the Australian colonies, and so can be considered Australia's first official coins. They were dated 1797 and 1799, with

Britannia The image of Britannia () is the national personification of United Kingdom, Britain as a helmeted female warrior holding a trident and shield. An image first used by the Romans in classical antiquity, the Latin was the name variously appli ...

on one side and King George III on the other. In 1812, Governor

Lachlan Macquarie Major-general (United Kingdom), Major General Lachlan Macquarie, Companion of the Order of the Bath, CB (; ; 31 January 1762 – 1 July 1824) was a British Army officer and colonial administrator from Scotland. Macquarie served as the fifth Gove ...

bought Spanish dollar coins, following the arrival of the ship ''Samarang'' at Port Jackson with 40,000 Spanish dollars, paying four shillings and nine pence for each dollar. He was worried that the coins would quickly be exported out of the colony and had holes cut in the middle of them to try to keep them in Australia. These were known as Holey dollars (valued at five shillings), with the piece from the middle being called the Dump (valued at around 15 pence). Both were declared legal currency on 30 September 1813 and went into circulation in 1814. British currency became the official currency of the Australian colonies after 1825, with almost £100,000-worth of British coins being imported during 1824–25. The Holey dollar was no longer legal tender after 1829. The most notable Holey Dollar was the " Hannibal Head" a one of a kind coin that features the portrait of King Joseph I of Spain. The Hannibal Head sold at auction in 2018 to a private collector for $500,000.

Gold coins and Sovereigns

Unofficial gold coins were used during the gold rush of the 1850s. Traders' tokens were also used because of the shortage of coins caused by the large increase in population. Requests to make gold coins in Adelaide in 1852 to compensate for the shortage of coins were rejected by Britain after 25,000 One Pound pieces were struck. Australia's first official mint was in Sydney, founded in 1855. It produced gold coins with an original design between 1855 and 1870, with "Sydney Mint, Australia, One Sovereign" on one side and Queen Victoria on the other, or "Sydney Mint, Australia, Half Sovereign", before starting in 1870 to mint gold coins of British design. One gold sovereign equalled £1.

The pound

Federation in 1901 gave the Commonwealth a constitutional power to issue coins and removed this power from the States. British coins continued in use until 1910, when Australian silver coins were introduced. These included florins, shillings, sixpences and threepences. They had a portrait of King Edward VII on one side. Australian pennies and half-pennies were introduced into circulation the following year. In 1931 gold sovereigns stopped being minted in Australia. A

crown A crown is a traditional form of head adornment, or hat, worn by monarchs as a symbol of their power and dignity. A crown is often, by extension, a symbol of the monarch's government or items endorsed by it. The word itself is used, parti ...

or five-shilling coin was minted in 1937 and 1938.

The dollar

The

Australian dollar The Australian dollar (currency sign, sign: $; ISO 4217, code: AUD; also abbreviated A$ or sometimes AU$ to distinguish it from other dollar, dollar-denominated currencies; and also referred to as the dollar or Aussie dollar) is the official ...

replaced the

Australian pound The pound (sign: £, £A for distinction) was the currency of Australia from 1910 until 14 February 1966, when it was replaced by the Australian dollar. Like other £sd currencies, it was subdivided into 20 shillings (denoted by the symbol s o ...

on 14 February 1966 as part of the

decimalisation Decimalisation or decimalization (see American and British English spelling differences, spelling differences) is the conversion of a system of currency or of weights and measures to units related by Power of 10, powers of 10. Most countries have ...

process. At this time, 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, and 50 cent coins were issued. $1 coins were first issued in 1984, and $2 coins soon followed in 1988. The one- and two-cent coins were discontinued in 1990 and withdrawn from circulation in February 1992.

References

External links