George of Saxby Downs and his wife 1909

Aboriginal breastplates, also known as king plates, gorgets and brassplates, are given to individual Aboriginal people. A type of military gorget is chosen. A crescent is the most dominant shape but squares, circles and other shapes are also used.
In the early days of colonial Australia the governors and the land holders saw advantage in singling out certain Aboriginal people as leaders and distinguishing them in some way, so as to ensure their cooperation in the Europeans’ efforts to open up the land during the 19th and early 20th centuries.

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The Cherbourg Memory is an initiative of the Rationshed Museum and brings together the photos, videos, oral history recordings, documents and other artifacts of our lives on this settlement. It a website, an archive, an educational resource, a recording project, a research data-base, a store of the people’s stories and an interactive space for comments and engagement. We encourage the people of Cherbourg, the Indigenous communities in Australia and others who have experience of our settlement to help us create a living archive of Barambah-Cherbourg. So find out a little more about the Cherbourg Memory, discover how you can Participate, or find out how you can Contribute to the development of the Cherbourg Memory.