1 Dollar - Elizabeth II 4th Portrait - Discover Australia - Adelaide

Part of Perth Mint's "Discover Australia" series launched in 2007, these dollars used pad printing — a process borrowed from industrial manufacturing that transfers ink from a silicone pad onto the coin's surface — to achieve color effects that conventional die striking cannot produce. The technique was still relatively novel in numismatic applications at the time, and quality consistency across the mintage was not always guaranteed. Adelaide itself was chosen as one of the series subjects as the planned capital of a free-settlement colony, founded in 1836 without convict labor — a distinction South Australians guarded carefully.