it is, when you print out your coordinate, if will result in a human-readable print out of the coordinate.

    import iris
    import iris.tests.stock as stock

    cube = stock.global_pp()

    print cube.coord('time')
        DimCoord(array([1996-12-01 00:00:00], dtype=object), bounds=array([1996-12-01 00:00:00], dtype=object), standard_name='time', units=Unit('hours since 1970-01-01 00:00:00', calendar='360_day'))

    print repr(cube.coord('time'))
        DimCoord(array([ 232560.]), bounds=array([[ 215280.,  249840.]]), standard_name='time', units=Unit('hours since 1970-01-01 00:00:00', calendar='360_day'))

Relates to [google thread](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/scitools-iris/aw_zoMyKLj4)