My Sash

At the bottom where it starts, it has the turtle, dugong, and crayfish. These sea animals represent all the main traditional food we hunt and eat in the Torres Straits. Going up the sash you’ll see two sharks, and they are the guardians of the big reefs where we go to hunt. Every time we go hunting and diving, they’ll always patrol the edges of the big reefs.

Up from the sharks you’ll see a man diving for fish – that represents how Torres Strait Islanders connect to the ocean and the animals that we hunt for. The Torres Strait flag is just to show I graduated in the Torres Strait from Tagai State College.

Up from the flag there’s my island home (HMD). It represents me leaving my families, and the trouble I went through to start my career in the Australian Army.

I moved down to Townsville and stayed there for one year whilst working as a labourer. During this time, I became bored with what I was doing and started to look into other job paths, but I didn’t find anything that interested me. After a conversation with my brother, he suggested I apply for the Army which I did the next day.

After a six-month process through Defence Force Recruiting, I was enlisted into the Army Indigenous Development Program (AIDP). This program is a seventeen-week program where recruits learn resilience, confidence, and also gain a Certificate 2 equivalent to a Year 10 educational standard. This enables the recruits to be allocated to a general entry role within the Army. The other activities that we completed during our training were physical training, adventure training, drill, field exercises, and adapting to the Army lifestyle.

Under the road through AIDP, there are two rifles which represent the corps to which I have been allocated, which is Infantry. The sniper rifles are there to represent what specialty I would like to do within Infantry. On my sash it also states, ‘Army Career’ which is a reminder for me that I want to stay in this career for as long as I can, and I look forward to the challenges ahead.