10 Dollars - Elizabeth II 3rd Portrait - Palm Cockatoo - Silver Proof

The Palm Cockatoo issue was part of the Royal Australian Mint's Endangered Species series, which ran through the early 1990s and drew on growing domestic concern over habitat loss in Queensland's Cape York Peninsula — the bird's only Australian range. The series was among the first Australian proof programs explicitly tied to conservation advocacy rather than purely numismatic or commemorative rationale.

Ian Rank-Broadley's third portrait of Elizabeth II had not yet replaced the Raphael Maklouf effigy at this point; the third portrait referenced in the catalog designation here is specific to Australian coinage sequencing under the Arnold Machin lineage as adapted locally.