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1 Dollar - Elizabeth II 4th Portrait - Land Series - Bilby
| Issuer | Royal Australian Mint |
|---|---|
| Year | 2009 |
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| Currency | Dollar (1966-date) |
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| Obverse description | The fourth crowned effigy of Queen Elizabeth II faces right, modelled by Ian Rank-Broadley, wearing the Girls of Great Britain and Ireland Tiara. The legend ELIZABETH II AUSTRALIA 2009 arcs around the upper periphery, with the engraver's initials IRB truncated below the portrait. The design is rendered in a refined, naturalistic style characteristic of Rank-Broadley's portraiture. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | A pad-printed polychrome depiction of a bilby (Macrotis lagotis) is shown foraging, its body lowered toward the ground over a vivid red sandy terrain, with prominent elongated ears erect and its distinctive pointed snout angled downward. A clump of reedy spinifex grass appears in incuse relief to the left of the field. The denomination numeral 1 appears in the upper left, with the legend DOLLAR inscribed to its right along the upper field. A small designer's mark is visible to the lower right of the animal. |
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| Additional information |
The Bilby dollar was part of the RAM's broader push in the late 2000s to use circulation coinage as a platform for native species awareness, coinciding with active conservation programs targeting the greater bilby — a marsupial that had been functionally extinct across most of its former range since the mid-twentieth century due to introduced predators and land clearing. The pad-printing process used for the color application was still relatively novel for Australian circulation issues at the time, producing pieces that degraded visibly with heavy use.
Bilbies had replaced the Easter Bunny in Australian conservation messaging campaigns as early as 1991, a cultural substitution that gave this particular animal unusual public recognition for a near-threatened species.