King Charles III hasn't even appeared on a single Australian coin in that capacity and already the republicans are plotting how to get rid of him. As Australia sleepwalks towards becoming a republic without nary a thought of what that republic should look like, we have already decided to hold a million different conversations in all directions with changing the look of different things including the flags and the coins.
Coins are an interesting piece of historical artefact because not only are they a useful token system to enable the exchange of goods and services, they also hold snapshots in time about what a nation broadly thinks about itself. The reverse on the 5c, 10c, 20c and 50c coins have been around for 56 years; which is an extraordinary amount of time. The obverse since Queen Elizabeth ascended the throne in 1953 has have five different iterations.
Upon becoming a republic though, we shall have to decide what we intend to replace the King's head with on the coins. Republics as opposed to monarchies and empires where power is vested in a single person, tend to arrive at three broad answers of what appears on the reverse. Those three answers are either the personification of the nation, or people of historical import, or heraldry.
1 - Personification:
Britain has Britannia who rules the waves; she sits on top of either a lion or a rock and has a shield and a trident. Britain also has John Bull who is the embodiment of stout working folk. He is sometimes accompanied by his bulldog.
Across the Channel, France has Marianne who represents liberté, égalité, fraternité. She has at various time led the poor across the Bastille, or through the streets of Paris; clutching le Tricolore or the Red Flag.
The United States has Columbia who while flying and naked, manifest destinied her way from sea to shining sea and to the west. For a while she wore a Phrygian Cap that made her look like a smurf or a diadem of guns. She was eventually forgotten and supplanted by Lady Liberty who thanks to a present from the French, got given a torch and a tablet. More recently she has been accompanied with Uncle Sam who needs 'You' to join him in fighting whatever wars he wants to pick a fight with this week.
Even New Zealand has Zealandia who as far as I can tell, has no obvious backstory at all.
Australia has no obvious personification who is the embodiment of the nation. The only example that I can find for anyone who resembles the personification of Australia is "the Little Manly Boy" who is supposed to represent meekness and submissiveness to a world of bigger powers. He does what he is told. He does not complain. He is relatively spineless. In some respects he was the perfect personification of Australia at the time, for from 1914, Australia sent some of her brightest sons to become worm food and pieces of splattered meat across the fields of Europe. The Little Manly Boy did what he was told and just like so many young men who did not come home, he did not survive the First World War.
Upon failing to find anyone suitable to fill the job vacancy of Personification of the nation, we might look to people of Historical Import.
2 - Historical Import:
The United States when it wasn't putting eagles, Columbia or Lady Liberty all over its currency, decided to put its dead presidents on the currency. Every single President including the then recently deceased Kennedy who appeared on Half Dollar coins from 1964, was dead. In the just completed Presidential Dollars series of $1 coins, the exceptions to who can appear on them is Clinton, W Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden.
I do not think that Australia can go down this route without immediately running into serious issue. We can not very well put any of the pre-Federation Governors on our coins because I suspect that there isn't a one who wasn't engaged in dispossession and/or extermination of first peoples. Likewise, apart from Henry Parkes who was a serial bankrupt and had so many kids he didn't know what to do, our 'Founding Fathers' are equally problematic. From Barton to Deakin, from Reid to Watson, there aren't also serious objections. Politics is such that even the great Prime Ministers like Curtin, Menzies, or Whitlam, would be invariably objected to by the right-wing proto-fascist media, or the left-wing pseudo-communist intelligentsia.
Probably the only people of historical import that Australia could put on the obverse of coins without serious and major objection are Donald Bradman, Fanny Durack, Peter Brock, and Phar Lap.
I say this with a sense of complete hypocrisy considering that with the exception of the Five Dollar note and the older One Dollar note, we have done exceptionally well at placing people on our notes. We have been almost entirely apolitical with the representation of people on the banknotes and while that works well, having a common obverse across all of the coins is a different matter
3 - Heraldry:
Germany has for a very long time been putting variations of its eagle on the back of coins. The eagle even gets stylised to match the design on the front. Switzerland is able to put its shield with the square cross on it, flanked by the letters CF for Confédération Helvétique. Italy despite the connotations of times past, has also put the fasces on its obverse of coins.
All of these are fine except that Australia already has been putting its coat of arms on the standard reverse of some coins since 1910. The definitive 50 cent coin still has Stuart Devlin's excellent depiction of the Australian Coat of Arms. Asking this to go from the reverse to the obverse is not impossible but it might cause us to start having a paradigm shift in thinking without using the clutch.
So now what?
This wouldn't be a blog post on the internet without the author pontificating wildly with half-baked ideas and ill-conceived concepts. Fortunately in a pique of superbia and hubris, I can already fulfil this quota of fipwittery.
My solution is this:
The 1909 Florin was a pattern piece and was never put into circulation. It is a pity. For a while the 3d. 6d. 1/- and 2/- coins all featured the same coat of arms on them and the 1/2d. and 1d. were among the most boring coin designs in the history of the world.
As an island nation, the coastline lends itself exceptionally well to being instantly identified. We have used stylised versions of this for "Made In Australia" marks, for the logos of various government agencies at times, and for the logo of years of import and celebrations. On top of this, the outline of Australia is sufficiently round enough that it already fits nicely on a coin. Possibly only France with l'hexagone is as fortunate as well are.
Admittedly we could just invent some national personification but who would it be? We could place our former Prime Ministers and Governors-General on the coins but why risk the permanent outrage? We could take a heraldic turn but the fact is that the One Dollar coin with its kangaroos, the Twenty Cent coin that manages to depict a platypus underwater, or the Ten Cent coin with its mysterious lyrebird, are already pretty close to some of the best coin designs ever.
The coastline of Australia is apolitical which means that it isn't going to annoy anyone, it is ahistorical which means that how we feel about it in future isn't likely to change, and best of all it is instantly identifiable which means that everyone can look at it and know what it is for.
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