1 Dollar - Elizabeth II 4th Portrait - Mutiny and Rebellion - The Rum Rebellion

The Rum Rebellion of January 1808 remains the only successful armed overthrow of a government in Australian history. New South Wales Corps officers, led by Major George Johnston, arrested Governor William Bligh — the same Bligh of Bounty infamy — partly in response to his attempts to suppress the illegal rum trade that had become the colony's de facto currency. Bligh was held under house arrest for over a year before being permitted to sail to England.

Johnston was court-martialled in London in 1811 and cashiered, though he escaped a harsher sentence. Bligh never returned to the colony.