Penny - Kangaroo, Coin Type from Australia - detailed information

The Australian penny coin was a small circulating denomination of the Australian Pound. It has the same dimensions and composition as the British pre-decimal penny, 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). It was worth one twelfth of an Australian shilling and 1/240 of an Australian pound.

The reverse of the first type of Australian penny coins featured text only. In 1938, this new design by George Kruger Gray superseded it - featuring the iconic leaping kangaroo.

The coins were struck by a number of different mints, with various mint marks:
- Melbourne Mint, 1938 - 1964, no mint mark
- Perth Mint, 1940 - 1964, dot between designer's initials: K.G or dot after denomination: PENNY.
- Bombay Mint, 1942 - 1945, dots before and after the denomination: .PENNY., plus letter I on the obverse
- Royal Mint, 1951, letters PL

Counting the known mintages of proofs, a total of 703,916,879 (704 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 They circulated until decimalisation and were withdrawn in 1966, when Australia switched to its current Australian Dollar currency.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 penny coins were never formally demonetised and are still legal tender for 10⁄12¢.