20 Cents Charles III, 1st Portrait - Where is the Green Sheep

Issued as part of the Royal Australian Mint's ongoing coloured circulation-format novelty program, this piece belongs to a series celebrating the Merino sheep's role in Australian agricultural history. The Merino was first brought to Australia in 1797 via a consignment arranged by Captain John Macarthur, whose subsequent wool-breeding program at Camden Park laid the commercial foundation for what became the country's dominant export industry through the nineteenth century. Pad printing — a transfer-based ink process borrowed from industrial manufacturing — allows colour application to cupronickel without altering the coin's legal tender status.