50 cents 2025 - Dorothea Mackellar
By CAA | Wednesday, 12 March 2025
A set of 50 cents coins to honour the poems of Dorothea Mackellar was released on March 13, 2025. These coins were available as a three-coin collection ($50) or individually ($20 each).
Born in 1885, Mackellar remains a literary icon, her works reflecting a connection to the landscapes and contrasts of her opal-hearted country. She published poetry and other works between 1908 and 1926 and was active in the Sydney literary scene of the 1930s. In her later years she ceased writing and, suffering poor health. She died in 1968.
50 cents 2025 - Dorothea Mackellar - Dawn
Inspired by Dawn, the first coin captures the tranquil beauty of the road to Gunnedah, a place Mackellar held dear. As the soft light of sunrise spreads across the landscape, a delicate spider web glistens. It evokes Mackellar's deep connection to her family property, Kurrumbede, where she was often moved by the mystic splendour of daybreak.
The intricate design invites collectors to pause and marvel at the transformative power of dawn, as Mackellar did in her life and writing.
At the dawning of the day,
On the road to Gunnedah,
When the sky is pink and grey
As the wings of a wild galah,
And the last night-shadow ebbs
From the trees like a falling tide,
And the dew-hung spiderwebs
On the grass-blades spread far and wide –
Each sharp spike loaded well,
Bent down low with the heavy dew –
Wait the daily miracle
When the world is all made anew:
When the sun’s rim lifts beyond
The horizon turned crystal-white,
And a sea of diamond
Is the plain to the dazzled sight.At the dawning of the day,
To my happiness thus it fell:
That 1 went the common way,
And 1 witnessed a miracle.
50 cents 2025 - Dorothea Mackellar - My Country
The second coin brings to life Mackellar's most iconic poem, My Country, a love letter to the land she described as a wilful, lavish land of both beauty and extremes. It is is widely known in Australia, especially its second stanza. It was written at age 19 while overseas in England, and first published in the London Spectator in 1908 under the title Core of My Heart.
The design is a sweeping portrait of Australia's diverse landscapes – sunlit beaches, green forests, fertile farmlands and rugged plains; it pays homage to the country's dramatic contrasts. Mackellar's famous words, I love a sunburnt country, echo through the design, reminding us of her ability to celebrate the land's splendour while embracing its challenges.
The love of field and coppice,
Of green and shaded lanes.
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins,
Strong love of grey-blue distance
Brown streams and soft dim skies
I know but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror –
The wide brown land for me!A stark white ring-barked forest
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon.
Green tangle of the brushes,
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops
And ferns the warm dark soil.Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When sick at heart, around us,
We see the cattle die –
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady, soaking rain.Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the Rainbow Gold,
For flood and fire and famine,
She pays us back threefold –
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze.An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land –
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand –
Though earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.
50 cents 2025 - Dorothea Mackellar - The Colours of Light
The final coin, inspired by The Colours of Light, is a vivid tribute to Mackellar's lyrical mastery of colour and movement. Featuring a dazzling peacock, radiant flowers, and lush plants, this design reflects her poetic celebration of nature's vibrancy.
Mackellar has been described as a lyricist of light, and this coin embodies her ability to paint the Australian landscape with words.
This is not easy to understand
For you that come from a distant land
Where all thecolours are low in pitch -
Deep purples, emeralds deep and rich,
Where autumn's flaming and summer's green -
Here is a beauty you have not seen.All is pitched in a higher key,
Lilac, topaz, and ivory,
Palest jade-green and pale clear blue
Like aquamarines that the sun shines through,
Golds and silvers, we have at will -
Silver and gold on each plain and hill,
Silver-green of the myall leaves,
Tawny gold of the garnered sheaves,
Silver rivers that silent slide,
Golden sands by the water-side,Golden wattle, and golden broom,
Silver stars of the rosewood bloom;
Amber sunshine, and smoke-blue shade:
Opal colours that glow and fade;
On the gold of the upland grass
Blue cloud-shadows that swiftly pass;
Wood-smoke blown in an azure mist;
Hills of tenuous amethyst. . .Oft the colours are pitched so high
The deepest note is the cobalt sky;
We have to wait till the sunset comes
For shades that feel like the beat of drums -
Or like organ notes in their rise and fall -
Purple and orange and cardinal,
Or the peacock-green that turns soft and slow
To peacock-blue as the great stars show . . .Sugar-gum boles flushed to peach-blow pink;
Blue-gums, tall at the clearing's brink;
Ivory pillars, their smooth fine slope
Dappled with delicate heliotrope;
Grey of the twisted mulga-roots;
Golden-bronze of the budding shoots;
Tints of the lichens that cling and spread,
Nile-green, primrose, and palest red . . .Sheen of the bronze-wing; blue of the crane;
Fawn and pearl of the lyrebird's train;
Cream of the plover; grey of the dove -
These are the hues of the land I love.
50 cents 2025 not intended for circulation
