2016-04-09 Sat

British convicts were sentenced to transportation or were exiled to Australia from 1788 to 1868. Returning to their loved ones after their term was almost impossible. Before this separation, many convicts created love tokens, which are being replicated by the Royal Australian Mint in a new program.

“The tokens were used to maintain a sentimental bond between convict and loved one, and became cherished souvenirs for those people left behind,” according to the RAM.

The convicts would wear down large, low denomination coins and engrave them with poetic love quotes, their names, sentencing dates and pleas to never forget the deportees. Today, many of these tokens are in museums and private collections.

Three different Uncirculated 2016 copper dollar coins replicate famous designs, titled “Forget Me, Not,” “Gaol Bird” (“gaol” in Irish translates to “jail”) and “Remember Me When This You See.”

The original Gaol Bird token shows a chained bird, as created by Thomas Tilley, a convict transported July 29, 1785, for theft, according to the New South Wales Migration Heritage Centre. Tilley was a convict on the First Fleet bound for Australia, with a sentence of seven years.

The obverse of the coins features the Ian Rank-Broadley effigy of Queen Elizabeth II.