The shores of the dried-up Willandra Lakes hold the oldest ritual cremation site in the world, about 40,000 years old. This coloured 2012 one-dollar coin from the Perth Mint honours this New South Wales region, with a wedge-tailed eagle perched on a branch above the lake landscape.

The Willandra Lakes Region was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1981. Its Pleistocene lakes and sand formations preserve a geological record spanning 100,000 years, traces of human presence 45–60 thousand years ago and well-preserved remains of giant marsupials. After the listing, human fossil trackways 19,000–23,000 years old were also discovered here.

The coin is one of the five 2012 issues in the Celebrate Australia series, which the Perth Mint has devoted to World Heritage sites since 2010: Willandra, Kakadu, Uluru-Kata Tjuta, the Lord Howe Island Group and Fraser Island. All are coloured aluminium-bronze coins released on a card with a photograph of the site and a fold-out stand; the reverse reads WILLANDRA LAKES with the P mintmark, the obverse bears Ian Rank-Broadley’s portrait of Elizabeth II.

According to the Mint’s official figures, 2,671 Willandra coins were struck, the lowest mintage among the five dollars of 2012. The coin fits equally into a collection of birds of prey and one on humanity’s most ancient history.

UNC condition: the coin has never circulated, shows no wear and keeps its mint lustre.

Besides this coin, VPcoins offers other issues from the same era and region.