1 Dollar - Elizabeth II 2nd Portrait, Cook's Voyage

Issued to mark the bicentenary of James Cook's first voyage to New Zealand, which brought HMS Endeavour to the New Zealand coast in October 1769. The timing was politically delicate — Māori activists protested the celebrations as commemorating an invasion, and the bicentenary events became one of the earliest flashpoints of the modern Māori cultural renaissance. New Zealand was simultaneously transitioning to decimal currency, having adopted it only two years earlier in 1967, so this dollar circulated in a monetary system that was itself still relatively new to the public.