Unit Colour Patches (or simply known as Colour Patches) are worn on the slouch hat in the Australian Army to indicate which unit they are from. Unit colour patches are approximately 40mm x 40mm in size and have a large variety of colours and shapes to distinguish them.
While some are recent creations many date back to World War I, when on 8 March 1915 1 Division Order No 81 was issued at Mena, Egypt authorising their creation.
The original series of colour patches was discontinued in 1949, and a new system was introduced in 1987 known as Series I and Series II colour patches. The Series I range are known as the 'Heritage' patches and are the pre-1949 patches maintained in a register with the Series I 'Extended' and Series II range introduced during the 1990s. Both are used in the Australian Army due to some units tracing their lineage to the 1st AIF units. The Register also includes the patches for the Royal Australian Air Force and Royal Australian Navy patches.
Famous quotes containing the words unit, colour and/or patch:
“During the Suffragette revolt of 1913 I ... [urged] that what was needed was not the vote, but a constitutional amendment enacting that all representative bodies shall consist of women and men in equal numbers, whether elected or nominated or coopted or registered or picked up in the street like a coroner’s jury. In the case of elected bodies the only way of effecting this is by the Coupled Vote. The representative unit must not be a man or a woman but a man and a woman.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“Iconic clothing has been secularized.... A guardsman in a dress uniform is ostensibly an icon of aggression; his coat is red as the blood he hopes to shed. Seen on a coat-hanger, with no man inside it, the uniform loses all its blustering significance and, to the innocent eye seduced by decorative colour and tactile braid, it is as abstract in symbolic information as a parasol to an Eskimo. It becomes simply magnificent.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)
“Imperious Caesar, dead and turned to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.
O that that earth which kept the world in awe
Should patch a wall t’expel the winter’s flaw!”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)