Coins of Australia
The coins of Australia include the coins of the current Australian dollar and those of other currencies historically used in the country. 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, 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 that included trading for alcohol known as 'rum currency', a system disbanded when Macquarie became governor on 1 January 1810.Spanish dollars were sometimes cut into quarters, and the resulting pieces cut again into 2/3 and 1/3 segments, with the 2/3 segments being treated as "shillings" and the 1/3 segments "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 governor Philip Gidley King, the following eleven coins were legal tender for the exchange value of:
- Gold Johanna = £4/0/ –
- Gold Half Johanna = £2/0/ –
- Guinea = £1/2/ –
- Gold Mohur = £1/17/6 –
- Spanish dollar = 5 shillings
- Ducat = 9/6 –
- Rupee = 2/6 –
- Pagoda = 8/ –
- Dutch Guilder = 2/ –
- English shilling = 1/1 –
- Copper coin of 1 oz = 2 pence
In 1812, Governor Lachlan Macquarie of New South Wales 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 he had holes cut in the middle of them to try to keep them in Australia. These were known as holey dollars, with the piece from the middle being called the dump. 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.