Broad Arrow Seal

Broad Arrow Seal, Image & Found by Rod Lee.
Found in QLD Australia, 10 to 15mm.

(9?) broad arrow R or P // 12

Appears to have a broad arrow mark, these are normally associated with Government property, often military.

In Australia, "The broad arrow was used to denote government property in the Australian colonies[23] from the earliest times of settlement until well after federation. William Oswald Hodgkinson's government-sponsored North-West Expedition in Queensland used the broad arrow to mark trees along the expedition's route. The broad arrow mark was also used on survey markers. It can still be seen on some Australian military property. The broad arrow brand is also still used to mark trees as the property of the Crown, and is protected against unauthorised use.

In Victoria, Australia for example, Part 4 of the Forests (Licences and Permits) Regulations 2009 states that "an authorised officer may use the broad arrow brand ... to mark trees in a timber harvesting area which are not to be felled; or to indicate forest produce which has been seized under the Act; or to indicate that forest produce lawfully cut or obtained is not to be removed until the brand is obliterated with the crown brand by any authorised officer." The broad arrow is used currently by the Australian Army to denote property owned by the Department of Defence.

The mark was not widely used for convict clothing in Australia during the early period of transportation, as government-issued uniforms were rare. The Board of Ordnance took over supply in the 1820s, and uniforms from this period onwards were generally marked with the broad arrow, including so-called "magpie" uniforms. In an account published in 1827, Peter Miller Cunningham described Australian convicts as wearing "white woollen Paramatta frocks and trowsers, or grey and yellow jackets with duck overalls, (the different styles of dress denoting the oldness or newness of their arrival,) all daubed over with broad arrows, P.B.s, C.B.s, and various numerals in black, white, and red". In 1859, Caroline Leakey, writing under the pen-name "Oliné Keese", published a fictionalised account of the convict experience entitled The Broad Arrow: Being Passages from the History of Maida Gwynnham, a Lifer."