Tin Badge Of Health

TIN BADGE OF HEALTH *


No crown but
a thing put around the neck
only not so much like say pearls
of royalty, or diamonds on a silver chain
or even of gold,
neither in a gold or silver
clasp but more like that other
more unspeakable neck-worn thing
only made of tin

on an iron chain
else on a knotted rope-string
by 1885 and afterwards this badge
of health was what kept
them the tin badge-makers
branded 'niggers' from being
unhealthy on sight if they
so much as dared to cross that,
tin-decreed dividing river.

Tin like them new rooves of Elsey
for thunder heavy rains of the Never Never
in rifled south-eastern Arnhem Land,
on the tropic gun-range grasslands of the River Roper
was the rule at Elsey Station, same as Hodgson Downs,
as it was elsewhere then, a conquerer's rule
come in at Florida station up north Arnhem Land
in cross-cultural communication the natives were
gun-commanded into understanding
the reloaded orders about how
not to cross the river

for the good of their health,
the same, although on the Roper,
the good whitefellas made exceptions,
and so gave presents of tinplate badges,
on a chain or a string, as a necessary,
like passports back into a conquered martial land,
real badges of health like government policy
to be worn if one came across that
styx, that river and wanted
to remain alive

the river of a tin-made border
that sprung out of the barrels of guns
that bubbled out with the stream of life
chosen as the whiteman's cattle were
only without their own long-faithed
white husbandry-music in ancient cowbells,
animals with no tethers,
without yokes
or chains

or fences,
watched by health-conscious
animal riders
the cattle went about
like game
into blackfella's river crossing places
where the tinplate
badge wearers went, or else came
like banded lepers.

* * *

Image: Elsey Station, c.1908


* 1. Florida Station on the Goyder River 1885: "The niggers of this part of the coast had a particularly bad name. At the station, Florida by name, twenty miles up the river, the aborigines were never allowed on the same side of the river as the settlement. It was a case of shooting at sight if they did venture across." - [pp.185 - A. Searcy "In The Australian Tropics" -George Robertson & Co, London & Melbourne, 1907]

2. West of Roper Bar 1885: "I was informed that [the Aborigines] were not allowed across without permission, and when given this, had to wear a tin plate slung around the neck. It was bad for the health of one crossing without a badge." -[ pp.113 - A. Searcy "In The Australian Tropics" -George Robertson & Co, London & Melbourne, 1907]