Boring Old Coins Redesigned As ‘Straya Shrapnel’ Is The Currency Of The Future Australia Needs

Around this time every year, Australia fleetingly thinks on its identity as a nation, and what the future might hold for us as a people. The country’s state Premiers and Chief Ministers unanimously declared their support for an Australian republic this morning, while over the weekend a speech by Indigenous journalist Stan Grant on the nature of Australian racism captured the collective imagination.

On the less serious end of the national-identity spectrum lies ‘Straya Cash’, the creative reimagining of our currency by Melbourne graphic designer Aaron Tyler to include such luminaries as Dame Edna, Karl Stefanovic and Flamin’ Alf Stewart. Tyler released his first batch of ‘Straya Cash in October, with Australia’s famously lurid and indecipherable banknotes transformed into paeans for lamingtons, meat pies and Corey Worthington.

Now to complete the collection comes ‘Straya Shrapnel, featuring many of the icons only left off the new banknotes for want of space. If you’ve never considered the potential cultural impact of a 20-cent piece with Russell Coight on one side and Goon of Fortune on the other, or a ten-cent tribute to the hero forever “waiting for a mate”, it’s difficult to look at these and imagine anything else. They just…seem right.

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Check out the full collection here, and someone start a Change.org petition to get the Canberra Mint cranking these out already. The currency of the future has arrived.