Kevin is a passionate artist and teacher whose diverse portfolio of vibrant and striking works includes many Indigenous guernsey and shirt designs for high-profile sporting franchises, as well as murals in both public and private spaces in and around Perth.
During the past 250 years, the kangaroo has been recognised worldwide as Australia’s most emblematic animal. For tens of thousands of years, the remarkable marsupial lived alongside First Nations Australians, for whom it has always had enormous cultural and spiritual significance.
The kangaroo features in Dreamtime and other traditional stories handed down by Aboriginal people from generation to generation. Some mobs consider the kangaroo a totem, the subject of sacred beliefs and an important affirmation of their cultural identity. Kangaroos were integral to Aboriginal people’s way of life, providing meat for sustenance, and skins that were made into protective cloaks.
The coin’s reverse design represents Yongka. Yongka’s booka (skin) is decorated with cultural motifs. It is bounding through green grass and ochre rocks of the boodjar (lands of the Nyoongar nation), with the orange, brown and yellow KattaMorda (Darling Range) in the background. Overhead, the gradually darkening evening sky is portrayed in turquoise, blue and black dots, each representing a djinda (star). Included on the reverse is The Perth Mint’s ‘P’ mintmark.
Coin Highlights:
- Features original artistry of a kangaroo by Kevin Bynder, a proud Whadjuk-Yuet-Ballardong man
- 99.99% pure silver
- Worldwide mintage of 2,000 coins
- Australian legal tender