Why Did Australia Never Issue Halfcrowns?

Like the Farthing, we probably assessed them as a useless coin.

I asked this very same question in an article I wrote a couple of years ago for my local coin club Magazine. Here's the brief precis of my answer.

Australia did not issue halfcrowns because halfcrowns were not on the list of allowed denominations in the Schedule of the Coinage Act of 1909, nor was it ever added by subsequent changes to the Act. So we could not issue them because there was never a legal basis for issuing them.

Which of course simply changes the question. Why were halfcrowns never added to the Schedule? Enlil is more or less on the right track. In an effort to answer this, I searched through archived Australian newspapers from the period 1900-1909 for references to halfcrowns and found considerable discussion on them. Some comments were positive, but many were negative. One editorial in particular I found amusing, denouncing the coins in fairly strong terms as too big, too bulky and not in the spirit of decimalization which Australia at the time aspired to. That latter part is relevant; a government committee set up shortly after Federation to plan the new coinage at first sought to adopt a monetary system based on the decimal pound, but this idea was vetoed by the Colonial Office back in London. Replacing the halfcrown with the florin was the closest we could get.


All British coins were still legal tender in Australia, including halfcrowns, up to 1921 when Britain formally dropped the sterling silver standard. From 1910 to 1921, Australia gradually began withdrawing old British coinage, melting down anything too badly worn and repatriating the ones that were still good; this was all done at Australia's expense, in accordance with the agreement signed between Britain and Australia when we introduced our own coinage. This repatriation was steeply ramped up after 1921. I suspect the halfcrowns and farthings were pulled quickest, since they would have stood out as "British" much more easily, with no native coins to hide amongst.


No. Halfcrowns were never on the agenda, so no patterns were ever made. Crowns weren't on the original agenda, either, but the Act was amended in 1936 to allow for their production.

More or less, yes. They certainly circulated here; though coinage after 1910 was not deliberately transported here, much of it would have come in the hands of merchants and immigrants.

Sap, we never replaced the halfcrown with the florin as the florin was already in existence. Britain itself was already on the path to decimalization in the 19th century when it introduced the florin. British commerce was also in favor of decimal coinage (and the metric system) as can be seen by votes taken by The Executive Council of the Association of Chambers of Commerce in 1917 (ref: Spinks, column 325, May-June 1917).

I have always wondered how Australians coped 100 years ago when the lowest denomination was a half penny. It was a lot of money back then. The UK didn't get rid of their farthings until the 1950s.

Thanks guys - especially Sap - that is really interesting! The fact that decimalisation was envisaged even back in 1910 makes sense.




That's true. The lowest value stamp ever was a halfpenny. Today there is still a 1p stamp that you can buy for one (decimal) penny - but you would need 50 of them to post an inland second class letter!

My father's parents, who lived all their lives in New Zealand, told me that they remember British farthings circulating in NZ, but I'm not sure when that would have been. NZ didn't get its own bronze coins until the reign of George VI.

Many people who lived in the 1940s and 1950s in New Zealand and Australia claim to remember farthings. Their memory is, in part, playing tricks on them. Farthings were not used in everyday commerce in either country. But occasionally the larger retailers, especially the big department stores, would sometimes hold "farthing sales". They would advertise items for sale costing, for example, £4/19/11 and 3/4; customers would hand over a five pound note for the item and be given a farthing in "change". But they would not have been local farthings; the store would have pre-ordered in a large batch of farthings from Britain, just so they could be given away in the promotion. The resultant farthings were really souvenirs of attending the sale, rather than intended as legal tender money. Some of the stores issued the farthings in little advertisement cards or packets stating this.

Wonderful thread with some great information. Now if we just had a couple of bottles of 'Red' and a 'round table' this could go on for ages.!!