5 Dollars - Charles III 1st Portrait - Tassie Devil Joey

The Tasmanian devil joey depicted here references one of the more remarkable conservation stories in recent Australian natural history. The species was listed as endangered in 2008 following the spread of devil facial tumor disease — a transmissible cancer that has killed an estimated 80% of the wild population since the 1990s. Captive breeding programs, including insurance populations maintained on the mainland, have since reintroduced disease-free animals to Tasmania and, experimentally, to Barrington Tops in New South Wales.

Charles III's first portrait on Australian coinage was adopted from the effigy sculpted by King's Sculptor in Ordinary, Martin Jennings, approved for Commonwealth coinage in 2023.