The Mint

Australian money's pretty cool. Fun, fancy colors and coinage that is actually worth something ($1 and $2). Darren is intrigued by coins. It's one of the many new interests he's taken up in the last couple years (sort of the opposite of a mid-life crisis, I'm starting to think - which, for the record, is cool with me.)

He took us on a fun little outing to the Australian Mint...

We got to "make" our own new coins.

Then watched robots dumping huge barrels of unprinted gold coins into machines that stamp and sort them. Cool displays on how everything's done, examples of misprints and cool, specially-produced coinage.

I love a good factory.

My friend pointed out the different lengths of their bills to aid the blind. Poses the question: How do blind Americans differentiate between bills?