Last week I was in the Public Records of Victoria (PROV) looking at records of the Melbourne mint. My substack about the Sydney mint by rights should come first, but I’m fresh-ish off the plane so I’m doing this one first.
It was a bit extravagant building two mints in Australia. As I flicked through the massive file of equipment to order and repair I wondered why they built another one. I’d assumed it was just that Melbourne was much closer to where most of the gold turned out to be.