20 Toea - Elizabeth II Bennett's Cassowary

Papua New Guinea's first national coinage series launched at independence in September 1975, replacing the Australian dollar that had circulated during the Territory period. The Bennett's cassowary was selected not as decorative filler but as a deliberate assertion of endemic identity — this flightless bird exists nowhere else on earth outside of New Guinea and far northeastern Queensland.

The series ran through 1999 with minimal design alteration across a quarter century, an unusual continuity for a newly sovereign nation still defining its institutions.