10 Cents - Elizabeth II 2nd portrait

Fiji's coinage during this period was struck at the Royal Mint and, from 1975, increasingly at the Royal Australian Mint in Canberra as Britain wound down its colonial minting relationships. The shift reflected broader economic reallocation rather than any dissatisfaction with output quality. Fiji's independence in 1970 — mid-series — required no immediate redesign, as the colonial portrait coinage was retained by the new government as a pragmatic continuity measure.

Arnold Machin's effigy, introduced across Commonwealth coinages from 1968, appears here in its early years of circulation use.