Silver Ounce 1988 Holey Dollar - The Rainbow Serpent, Coin from Australia - detailed information

The Australian one ounce silver piece (abbreviated as 1 oz and designated with Ag for "silver") is a bullion and commemorative coin format. Uniquely, in Australia there are two mints authorised to strike legal tender: the Royal Australian Mint (which also makes the country's circulating coinage) and the Perth Mint which only makes collector and bullion coins, as well as other bullion products.

Both mints endeavour to create coins with attractive designs, and to introduce new designs and themes often, in order to raise the numismatic value of the coins over the value of previous metal used.

This coin is part of a "Holey Dollar" and "Dump" set issued by the Perth Mint, in what would later become a range of such sets.

The set contains two coins: a large (one ounce) coin with the shape of a ring, and a small "dump" which fits within the whole of the large coin. They are styled after the Holey Dollar and the dump, which were a form of emergency money in the colony of New South Wales. In 1813, in order to overcome a shortage of circulating coinage, the colonial government authorised the cutting out of a small piece (the dump) from a quantity of Spanish 8 Reales coins ("Spanish dollar), with the resulting two pieces being over-stamped as five shillings on the ring, and fifteen pence on the dump.

The 1988 set portrays the Aboriginal story of The Wawalag Sisters (also written as Wauwaluk Wawilak Waggilak, Wagilag, or Wawalik) - ancestral creator beings whose story is part of widespread sacred rituals in the Aboriginal culture from Arnhem land in the Northern Territory, Australia.

The story takes place in Dreamtime, a period of time in Aboriginal belief where ancestral beings created the land as well as the social and linguistic structures in it. According to the story, the sisters were travelling to the Arafura Sea, but had to stop as the elder sister was about to have a baby and needed to rest. Later on, the elder sister goes in the river to bathe with her child and the smell of afterbirth blood awakens Yulunggur, the Rainbow Serpent, who then comes out of its waterhole and swallows both sisters and the baby.