Halfpenny - Commonwealth of Australia, Coin Type from Australia - detailed information

The Australian halfpenny (or half penny) coin was the smallest circulating denomination of the Australian Pound; unlike the British pre-decimal Pound Sterling, the Australian Pound had no smaller denominations like the British farthings and fractional farthings.

The Australian halfpenny has the same dimensions and composition as the British pre-decimal halfpenny, from which it is derived (for a time, the coins circulated in parallel and were interchangeable in Australia - but not in the United Kingdom; the currencies were fixed at par). 1/2 penny was worth 1/24 of a shilling, or 1/480 of a pound.

The reverse of this first type of Australian halfpenny coins features text only. In 1939, a new design superseded this one - featuring the iconic leaping kangaroo; the old type of coins remained in circulation.

The coins were struck by a number of different mints; if they had mint marks for a particular year of issue, those are located under the scroll on the reverse:
- Royal Mint, 1911 - 1914, no mint mark
- Birmingham Mint (ex Heaton and Sons), 1912 - 1915, letter H
- Calcutta Mint, 1916 - 1918, letter I
- Sydney Mint, 1916 - 1926, no mint mark
- Melbourne Mint, 1923 - 1939, no mint mark

Counting the known mintages of proofs, a total of 81,157,566 (81 million) coins of this type were minted during its existence. They circulated until decimalisation and were withdrawn in 1966, when Australia switched to its current Australian Dollar currency. Unlike some of the larger denominations, they were not re-denominated into units of the new currency. However the halfpenny coins were never formally demonetised and are still legal tender for 5⁄12¢.