Holey dollar and dump
Macquarie recognised that the tactics employed by earlier governors of New South Wales had failed to suppress both the rum trade and the rampant peculation (embezzlement of government supplies) by the New South Wales Corps. By this time, the Corps had been trading for 17 years and many of its senior members were entrenched and influential leaders of colonial society. Macquarie decided that presenting the population with a better form of currency, one that would slowly devalue rum, was the best strategy.
In 1812, after the British government purchased 40,000 Spanish reales from Madras in India, Macquarie put his plan into action. To ensure the coins would lose their value once outside the colony, a small disc, called the ‘dump’, was punched from the centre of each coin, leaving the ‘holey dollar’. Macquarie decided that the holey dollar would be worth five shillings, and the dump 15 pence. He employed convicted forger William Henshall to cut and counter-stamp the coins.