Two black-necked storks among white snowflake water lilies: this is how the Perth Mint portrayed Kakadu National Park on a coloured 2012 one-dollar coin from the Celebrate Australia series. The choice of birds is no accident, as more than a third of all Australian bird species occur in the park.

Kakadu was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1981 for both natural and cultural values. Aboriginal people have lived here continuously for more than 50,000 years, and the park’s rock art, in UNESCO’s words, opens a window onto human life before the last ice age. Its coastal floodplains are Ramsar-listed wetlands visited seasonally by millions of waterbirds, and the escarpment runs for hundreds of kilometres with cliffs up to 330 m high.

Since 2010 the Celebrate Australia series has been devoted to World Heritage sites. Five coins appeared in 2012: Kakadu, Uluru-Kata Tjuta, the Lord Howe Island Group, Fraser Island and the Willandra Lakes Region. Each is a coloured aluminium-bronze dollar on a card with a photograph of the site and a fold-out stand; the reverse reads KAKADU NATIONAL PARK with the P mintmark, the obverse carries Ian Rank-Broadley’s portrait of Elizabeth II.

The Perth Mint’s official mintage for the coin is 2,972 pieces. It naturally links a bird collection, the theme of Aboriginal cultural heritage and a collection of the world’s national parks.

UNC condition: the coin has never been in circulation, there is no wear and the mint lustre is intact.

A themed selection that includes this coin is easy to expand with other items from the VPcoins catalogue.