The story of the failed Kangaroo Office ‘mint’
The Kangaroo Office was the brainchild of noted London engraver, medallist and diesinker, William Joseph Taylor, and two entrepreneur colleagues Dr Thomas Hodgkin and Peter Tindall (Jnr.). It is widely assumed that their ambition was to establish a ‘private mint’ in Melbourne and strike gold coins or ‘tokens’ of a quarter-ounce, half-ounce, one ounce and two ounces. They were to resemble money as closely as legally possible. The three men’s alleged inspiration was the booming price of gold. The standard narrative is that the venture’s prime objective was to profiteer on the difference in gold prices between the goldfields of Victoria and the market in London. They would buy the gold from the miners, then upgrade and produce gold tokens which would enable them to realise the full value of the gold in currency form, making a handsome profit.
Their ‘mint’ was situated near Flagstaff Gardens, in the present Franklin Street West. A mind-boggling £13,000 was invested in the enterprise, involving the charter of a fully-rigged 600-ton vessel, the Kangaroo, the delivery of machinery and dies, and the employment of manpower for the operation. But that narrative is just part of the false numismatic story as the gold price in Australia was stable, long before the Kangaroo set sail from England, mainly as a consequence of the Bullion Act 1852 in Adelaide. The venture is alleged to have been considered in November 1852. By this point in time, gold was around 71 shilling per ounce in the colonies, and had been for a while. The Kangaroo did not leave for a further seven months. Additionally, Dr Thomas Hodgkin is remembered as a philanthropist so being the lead party, or even just a party, in a profit-driven venture was not in his character. The store, the Kangaroo Office, failed as a venture due to a number of factors, lack of customers, lack of copper blanks, lack of diggers selling gold in Melbourne. All this can be found correspondence from Reginald Scaife, the store manager. The store closed in 1857. The Kangaroo duly arrived at Hobsons Bay of the 23rd of October, 1853, and the vast coining press was deposited on the wharf. Unfortunately, it was so heavy that no means existed to transport it to the store. The dockside cranes were not large enough to handle tonnage of this size and because of the goldfield rushes, there was an acute shortage of manual labour. There was nothing for it but to dismantle the whole thing and move it, piece by piece, to The Kangaroo Office, where it was reassembled and put into working order. The whole process took almost eight months.
The Kangaroo Office opened in May of 1854 but by the time everything was operational there was a glut of English sovereigns in circulation, gold had risen in price and the diggers were now getting £4 4s per ounce (with only one penny per ounce difference between the English sovereign and their sale price). It was then hoped that the facility would be chosen to produce official gold coins but it was not to be. The Kangaroo Office did strike issues of two ounces (£8 value), one ounce (£4), half-ounce (£2) and quarter-ounce (£1) but all these issues are extremely rare.
It has been argued that W. J. Taylor came to Melbourne and established the Kangaroo Office, because his signature is to be found on the tokens minted there. However, there is no evidence that he came to Australia. Taylor’s name is on tokens and medals attributed to the Kangaroo Office because either they were struck in his mint in London, or Scaife was using dies that Taylor had made for him.
The press was exhibited at the 1854 Melbourne Exhibition in an attempt to attract a new trade striking tokens and medals. When this failed the dispirited promoters in London issued instructions to the Kangaroo Office managers to close down the operation and sell up. The manager of the store, Reginald Scaife, left strict instructions on departing from Melbourne that ‘the dies should be taken out into the bay and sunk.’
This last instruction was not carried out however. Some of the dies were shipped back to London while the dies for the quarterounce and one-ounce coins were later found by Thomas Stokes, who bought the press in 1857.
Stokes continued to operate the press until 1914. It had produced some 82 penny and halfpenny tokens and was responsible for some early Army badges and buttons by the time it was decommissioned. The press was sold as scrap and dismantled in 1936.
The Kangaroo Office pieces (bullion rounds) rose to fame after the Coin and Token section of the British Museum purchased a set of the pieces in 1862/3 from William Morgan Brown, formerly of the Kangaroo Office. Head of the Keeper of Coins and Medals section at the time was W. S. W. Vaux. In a piece in the 1864 The Numismatic Chronicle and Journal of the Numismatic Society, published by the Royal Numismatic Society, Vaux made all sorts of unsubstantiated and false claims when he ‘introduced’ the weights to the numismatic world.
The coin in the photograph was once part of Egyptian King Farouk’s collection but is now owned by William Youngerman Inc in the United States. While it is not clear in the photograph, the numeral ‘4’ in the date 1854 has been engraved over the numeral ‘3’, making the date 1854/3. It is Youngerman’s opinion that the date was re-engraved on the original die to 1854 due to the late opening of the Kangaroo Office in 1854. All research tends to suggest that this may be the only surviving example outside of a museum. As such it ranks as one of the most significant rare gold coins in the world.