This beautiful coin features the great southern Australian continent in stunning Australian blue lepidolite. Since antiquity, European philosophers speculated that a large continent existed in the Southern Hemisphere to ‘balance’ those of the north. Terra Australis was the Latin term they coined to describe the posited great south land which different navigators explored in parts until Royal Navy cartographer Matthew Flinders completed the first circumnavigation of the island-continent now known as Australia in 1803.

Europeans were astonished by the exotic wildlife they encountered. Familiar to First Nations people for at least 60,000 years, they included the isolated continent’s famous pouched marsupials and an extraordinary diversity of fascinating birds and insects. Today, Australia supports about 850 bird species, of which roughly 45% are found nowhere else on Earth, while it is estimated that there are hundreds of thousands of insects – with many still waiting to be formally identified.

A beautiful and affordable coin, sure to be snapped up at record speed worldwide.