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Did You Know? Australia’s first mint operated in the early 1800s

Established in 1854, the Sydney Mint is known as Australia’s first mint. But in fact there was an earlier coin manufactory in New South Wales.

Author: The Perth Mint
Date: May 8, 2012 - 10:25:30 AM

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Established in 1854, the Sydney Mint is known as Australia’s first mint. But in fact there was an earlier coin manufactory in New South Wales.

Two hundred years ago in 1812, Governor Lachlan Macquarie secured 40,000 Spanish dollars to help solve the chronic shortage of coins in the young colony. The task of re-minting them was given to convict forger William Henshall.

The new coins were probably prepared in a workshop in the basement of a building known as the Factory. Its Bridge Street location was shared with a lumber yard containing all the “requisite workshops and covered in saw-pits for the mechanics and artificers in the immediate service of government”.

Here then was the ‘industrial’ heart of the new colony where the technology, equipment and craftsmen needed to heat, cut and counter-stamp coins were located.

Governor Lachlan Macquarie’s reports reveal that the required coining machinery was difficult to make and at first proved “defective, but eventually it was working, stamping out of the centre of each dollar a ‘dump’ equal to about one-quarter of the coin and given a local valuation of 1s 3d, leaving the ‘ring’ valued at 5s.”

So the ‘Factory’ was effectively Australia’s first mint, with Henshall Australia’s first mint master.

Five years after Cutty Sark was ravaged by fire, the much-loved sailing ship re-opened in Greenwich last week following a $78 million restoration project.

The sleek-lined clipper was built in 1869 in Scotland for the tea trade, an intensely competitive race across the globe from China to London.

Cutty Sark waits in Sydney Harbour for Australian wool.

But the opening of the Suez Canal and rise of steam shipping cut short the age of the great China tea clippers.

In 1883, Cutty Sark began a new phase of her career, finding an edge in transporting wool from Australia to Britain.

Taking a dangerous southerly course to catch the strong westerly winds of the Roaring Forties, Cutty Sark dodged icebergs and fought gales to achieve her extraordinary times. In 1885 she set a record of just 73 days for the passage from Sydney to London.

As the last of the tea clippers, Cutty Sark is a unique reminder of the fastest sailing ships once famous around the globe. As people in Britain celebrate her renewal, it is serendipitous that Ships That Changed The World should wrap-up this month with a superb silver coin commemorating her legendary status and important role in Australian history.

The history of The Perth Mint started with the founding of the Perth branch of Britain’s Royal Mint in 1899. At the time, gold sovereigns and half sovereigns were used throughout the British Empire as everyday circulating coins and it was the Royal Mint’s responsibility to supply them.

View all articles by The Perth Mint

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