1 Rupee

The Clunies Ross family operated the Cocos (Keeling) Islands as a private fiefdom for over a century, importing indentured Malay laborers to work their coconut plantations and paying them in a scrip currency redeemable only at the family's own store. This arrangement kept the workforce in a state of permanent economic dependency — there was nowhere else to spend it and no mechanism to convert it to sterling. The ivorine tokens, introduced in the early twentieth century, replaced an earlier bone series and were deliberately impractical outside the islands.

Australian authorities finally abolished the system in 1978, nearly seven decades after this token was struck.