25 Cents - Elizabeth II 4th Portrait - Australian Holey Dollar and Dump

The original Holey Dollar and Dump of 1813 were Australia's first locally issued currency — created by Governor Lachlan Macquarie's solution to a chronic coin shortage in the colony. Spanish Colonial eight-reales pieces were purchased, the centres punched out, and both the ring and the plug counterstamped and revalued: the ring at five shillings, the dump at fifteen pence. One coin became two, effectively doubling the face value of the imported silver in circulation.

This 2013 issue marks the bicentennial of that decision. The dump denomination — fifteen pence in 1813 — is here rendered as a 25-cent piece, a necessary modernisation with no historical equivalent.