X for Xantippe — the coin in the Great Aussie Coin Hunt collection baffling people

Aus Post’s Great Aussie Coins feature true-blue icons — footy, didgeridoos, Vegemite — but one coin has people scratching their heads. What is X for Xantippe?

Forget Ooshies or Little Shop — the new collectable kid in town is Australia Post’s Great Aussie Coin Hunt.

The Royal Australian Mint is producing 26 limited-edition legal tender coins that will be given out as change at post offices over the coming weeks.

The A to Z of Australiana could see you pocketing a Neighbours , Weet-Bix or didgeridoo $1 coin in your small change.

But one piece has people scratching their heads. Alongside V for Vegemite, L for lamingtons and Q for quokkas is X for Xantippe.

Xantippe? What, where or what is a Xantippe? It’s the Great Aussie Coin conundrum.

There are 26 $1 Australiana coins to collect, such as G for ‘G’Day’. Picture: Daniel Pockett/Getty Images.

X marks what spot? The X for Xantippe coin has people scratching their heads.

WHAT’S XANTIPPE?

As it turns out, there’s so little of Xantippe, blink and you really could miss it.

But it’s great news for Western Australia’s Dalwallinu Shire. There are hopes the coin could put the region, nestled in the Wheatbelt, on the map.

“I think it’s amazing. I heard about the coins on TV but I didn’t know we’d be featured,” said Steven Carter, president of the Dalwallinu Shire.

“It did lead me to think of what other things they could have put on a coin for ‘X’ instead. But there’s not a lot of Australiana that’s linked to the letter X and I suspect X-rays and xylophones aren’t Australian.

“I can’t think of anything better than Xantippe.”

What is Xantippe

— Sam Auld (@auldy27) September 30, 2019

Xantippe is a teeny, tiny town 220km northeast of Perth, one of the more modest communities in the shire of 7000 people.

Australia Post said it chose Xantippe as it’s the only town in the country that begins with an X.

“It’s not a town anymore,” one local told news.com.au. “It used to have a school and a cricket team, but literally the only thing there now is a water tank.”

RELATED: Australian Mint and Australia Post release coins to celebrate Australian icons

And what a water tank, Mr Carter said. “It’s Xantippe’s visual landmark. It’s unique because of the way water is harvested off the rock.”

Hydraulic pressure, defying gravity, pushes water uphill into the 1920s concrete tank.

If you’re looking for more traditional country town attractions — a main street or a pub — you’ll go wanting. But if you crave a place bursting with wheat and wildflowers, with one of Australia’s only bona fide Struggle streets and a history linked to a quarrelsome witch, well, Xantippe — pronounced “zan-tippy”— is where it’s at.

Xantippe lies several hundred kilometres northeast of Perth. Picture: Google Maps

View of the Xantippe water tank from Xantippe Rock. The tank is the locality’s most obvious landmark. Picture: Lennix3/Wikipedia Commons

LINK TO ANCIENT GREECE
Just 20 people call the locality home — one of those is Mr Carter who farms wheat, oats, canola and “lots of sheep”.

“I’m a relative newcomer, I’ve only been here for 35 years. One day they’ll accept me as local,” he chuckled to news.com.au.

Even though the shire’s population has risen, Xantippe’s has dwindled as farms have got bigger and residents have drifted towards larger towns and cities.

“It’s like every small rural community. There’s not the people for a cricket team or enough kids to go to a school,” Mr Carter said.

Why it has one of the most curious place names is a bit of mystery. Xanthippe was the wife of Athenian philosopher Socrates, born some 500 years before Christ.

She certainly had spirit. In several paintings, a riled Xanthippe is depicted pouring the contents of a chamber pot, an Athenian toilet, over Socrates’ head.

“She was particularly quarrelsome and grumpy and a bit of a witch, so perhaps when they named Xantippe they decided living here was (difficult) like living with a very quarrelsome witch. We just don’t know,” Mr Carter pondered.

Reyer van Blommendael’s 17th century painting ‘Socrates, his Wives and Alcibiades’ shows Xanthippe (right) pouring a chamber pot over Socrates’ head.

A more feasible explanation, he said, was that it was an anglicisation of a local Aboriginal word for “looking for water from a deeper well”.

That would tie in with a preponderance of gnamma holes in the area — ancient wells and watering holes that tap into the water table and bring the moisture to the often parched land.

Water aside, Xantippe has another claim to fame — an actual bona fide “Struggle Street”; Mr Carter lives on it.

“When it was wet it was a struggle to drive up the red clay in the old ute. It stuck and now it’s a gazetted road,” he said.

It’s true — it’s on Google Maps.

Beyond Xantippe, the wider Dalwallinu Shire region is known as the “wattle shore of the world” said Mr Carter, due to 168 different varieties along with scores of other wildflowers like orchids and everlastings.

“It’s a destination for wildflower spotters when the season is on in August and September. Aside from that, it’s a bit hot,” he said.

Come because of the coin, stay for the wildflowers like everlastings (above) that flood the area around Xantippe.

The locals may not have known they were about to feature on the Australia Post coins but they weren’t surprised. Whenever an A to Z of Australia occurs, Xantippe gets a mention.

“We did have Sunrise through here once. Everyone has to funnel through here for X,” Mr Carter said.

Although Mr Carter did ponder whether Australia Post’s coin could have been slightly more inventive then simply a big X marking its location in Western Australia. Perhaps the water tank?

Despite only having 20 residents, Xantippe was a genuine Australian town, the shire president insisted.

“We have our own postcode — 6609 — so that makes it official. Xantippe’s no furphy,” Mr Carter said.

The new coins will be released in batches every Monday until October 21 and could be in your small change if you make a purchase at a post office.

But despite X being at the end of the alphabet, you don’t have to wait until late October to get your hands on X for Xantippe.

Along with A for Australia Post, F for footy, I for Iced VoVo, M for meat pie and S for surf lifesaving, it’s is one of the first batch of coins released this week.

Australia Post will be visiting Xantippe on October 25 to mark the coin’s production.