Pre Australia Coins

The earliest settlers in New South Wales used whatever coinage came to hand. The colony was perpetually short of coinage as it needed to import much more than it could export. The government periodically issued "proclamations", declaring certain foreign coins to have certain face value equivalents in Sterling; the coins mentioned in the 1800 proclamation are known as "proclamation coins". An early abortive attempt at making export-resistant coinage was the "Holey Dollar" of 1813; the experiment was largely a failure and the Holey Dollars were officially withdrawn in 1824, when British coinage became the nominal legal tender.

The goldrush of the 1850s saw another shortage of coin; this time, it was private tokens that filled the gap, resulting in the "tradesman tokens" of the 1850s to 1870s. The profusion of token issuers and the resultant problems of bogus tokens ("not fair dinkum") meant the colonial governments eventually declared tokens illegal, making British coinage sole legal tender again. This British coinage all had to be imported from Britain, as the Colonial mints in Sydney, Melbourne and later Perth were only authorized to strike gold coins, not silver or bronze.

Although the Australian colonies federated in 1901, there was some debate about exactly what form of currency the new nation should use; Australian coinage did not come into existence until after the Coinage Act of 1909 was passed. The first coins struck were dated 1910.

Thank you both for your in depth and excellent answers.....