In sharp contrast to the 'typical Australian' as a blue-eyed surfie, popular images of indigenous Australians tend to be negative, but also essentialised. These negative stereotypes are based on a belief that there are ineluctable features of 'Aboriginality' based on the tradition of 'primitivism'. That world is structured by sets of images and ideas that have slipped from their original metaphoric status to control perceptions of primitives. Primitives are like children, the tropes say. Primitives are mystics, in tune with nature, part of its harmonies.
Primitives are free.
It tells us what we want it to tell us. On all Australian coins, as would be expected, the 'head' side depicts the Queen, while on the 'tail' side all the coins exhibit fauna. Except that is, the two dollar coin, which carries a commemorative image of an indigenous Australian male, which was intended to celebrate the bicentenary of Australia's 'settlement'. Wildlife as icons in currency signify the taming of the 'natural order'. A new set of Australian coins could be designed to replace the present set which can be 'read' as suggesting that indigenous Australians evolved from frill-necked lizards, or that indigenous Australians are the highest form of animal life on the Australian continent.