5 Dollars - Elizabeth II 4th Portrait - The Rum Rebellion

The Rum Rebellion of January 1808 remains the only successful armed overthrow of a government in Australian history. Governor William Bligh — the same Bligh of the Bounty mutiny twenty years earlier — was arrested by officers of the New South Wales Corps, a unit so thoroughly compromised by the colony's illicit liquor trade that "rum" had become a shorthand for the entire patronage economy they controlled. London eventually recalled Bligh and cashiered the Corps, but not before the insurgents had run the colony for over two years.

The coin is part of the RAM's ongoing Convict Era series commemorating formative moments in colonial history.