The Earliest Australian/Imperial Silver/Bronze/Copper Minted Coinage?

Definitely not. Prior to the 1900s no Australian mint produced anything other than gold coinage.

The Sydney Mint collapsed in the 1920s because it had trouble transitioning from a gold-coins-only mint to one that mass-produced bronze and copper coins. The machinery needed to make coins of the tougher alloys is more resilient than that required for gold, and Sydney simply never had it. They would not have suffered from this transition if they already had the equipment needed.

The main Royal Mint in London had all the steam-powered high-pressure presses needed for mass-production of silver and copper coins for Britain itself, and (they reckoned) for the rest of the Empire as well. They zealously guarded this privilege; they only relented in establishing the branch mints in Australia on the condition that they were only used to strike goldrush gold into urgently needed trade coinage. If the Australian colonies had had access to a local source of regal coinage, there wouldn't have been a colonial coinage shortage and thus wouldn't have been any tradesman tokens.

The Sydney mint might have requested permission to expand their operations and start striking British silver and copper coins in Australia, to help alleviate the aforementioned coin shortage, but such permission was never granted, and non-gold coinage dies were never created and sent to Australia. After the brouhaha with the "Sydney Mint" sovereign design, the Australian branch mint would never have been trusted to create their own silver and copper coin dies from scratch, as they had neither the equipment nor expertise for this. Nor were the coinage presses in Sydney upgraded to cope with silver and copper output. And finally, if such coins had been struck, it wouldn't have been a secret; the coins would no doubt have been mintmarked, just like the gold coins (and the subcontracted coins from Heaton and King's Norton mints in Britain and other colonies).

I ran a Google search for the phrase "The Sydney Branch expanded its production in 1868 to bronze coins", and found a whole bunch of third-party websites that all seem to be copying each other; I assume your NSW government website simply copied from one of those. I don't know who originally came up with the "Sydney minted silver and bronze coins" story, but they were talking through their hat.

Stokes and Co Melbourne were making copper penny and halfpenny tokens for Australia and New Zealand at least in the 1850s like these




1864 for NZ tradesperson




1862 for NZ tradesperson, but this trader was precviously in Melbourne and had tokens made in 1853 and 1855 by Stokes as well.

Generally they were the cheaper option and were making tokens for NZ producers long after they were illegalised in Victoria (1868). The latest Kiwi tokens I have by them are 1874 and 1875.

Although tokens they were accepted as pennies and halfpence at a time of shortages of these coins from England.

You are correct; all issues 1911-1918 were minted in London, Birmingham or Calcutta.

I think the branch mints definitely looked into striking silver coins in the 1800s but I don't think it got any further than discussions.

Preaching to the choir,

Have you seen my collections of British, Australian and New Zealand coinage.
However I do like to collect all 3 coinages outside of their usage in New Zealand in these ways

1. New Zealand Tradesmen and Special Purpose tokens issued between 1857 and the 1920s
2. Australian coinage after 1934
3. British coinage before 1840 (When our first "official" shipments arrived) and 1935 (When all silver was demonitised) and 1967 (Bronze was, although we had our own Pence and Halfpence from 1939 onwards - 1940 dated coins were released in Nov 1939, Britannia coins remained in circulation).

New Zealand also officially used Australian coinage between 1910 and 1919 for silver (Because the UK debased their coins in 1920, we were encouraged to not use higher purity Australian ones - but it did not work). New Zealand also officially used Australian minted gold coins from 1855 to 1932 and in 1932 a plan to circulate Australian florins in place of British Halfcrowns never took off - because due to the devaluation of the Australian pound, these coins were worth less than sterling coins.

In 1931 there was a period of coin smuggling in New Zealand, when our pound was devalued to 16/- British and this meant any British coin was worth 10% more in Australia and 25% in Britain.

Between 1931 and 1934, smuggling of English coins, especially half crowns led to NZ's coin supply being depleted and several people arrested for smuggling. One man smuggled £1200 worth of half crowns and made £100 of it. Not bad in the Depression when £1 was a decent weekly wage. Coins were smuggled on steamers to Sydney and London in gas canisters, frozen chickens, hat boxes, cardboard suitcases full of holes and through stewards who were paid 10/- each to smuggle £50 worth of coins into Australia for an immediate £5 bonus which gave the smuggle £4/10- after expenses.

NZ's first coin the Halfcrown was finally issued in late November 1933 and the British Halfcrown was immediately made illegal and worthless (About 10d in scrap silver). The rest of our silver coins arrived between Feb and May 1934 and by March 31st 1935, all British silver was made illegal and only New Zealand silver coins could be used.

In the early 1960s, stories started of Australian silver coins being smuggled to New Zealand and melted down with the silver sold for a profit. Most was by Chinese migrants and jewellers who were all arrested and several Chinese deported.

Despite NZ getting its own coins, none were ever minted here, which put us at a major disadvantage compared to Australia and meant we were at the mercy of the UK and Canada and in WW2 this caused problems.

Again, a fascinating tale, thanks Princetane