Lawn Medallion

There's a strip of land in front of our house and it's been there since the place was built, untouched by development and landscaping since at least the 1940's judging from the Council aerial photos. So I thought I'd put a metal detector on it to see what might be hiding under the stony loam, weeds and grass.

Not much was the conclusion, with the exception of this very corroded and sorry looking medallion made from a metal alloy. The words "Brisbane", "Children's" and "Church" were barely distinguishable but a quick web search revealed the original design and the story behind it. The medallion once read "Australian Church Congress, Children's Demonstration Brisbane 1913 - a major Anglican event where five thousand children marched through the streets of Brisbane, each Sunday school under it's own banner. As part of the ceremony every child was presented with one of these "congress medals". A small find by all means but still gave me a bit of a buzz, considering that it is contemporary with the construction of the house.

Our house was built by a crafty Cape York tin miner in 1913 and he and his wife married that same year and had children in the following years, so the medallion must have belonged to some other youngster. Perhaps that child was walking across the nature strip on the way back from school on that balmy spring afternoon in September 1913, past that newly built house on the hillside, playing with the token in a pocket when it was lost. Or perhaps I'm loosing myself in romantic conjecture.

Sources:

- Clarence and Richmond Examiner, 09 Sept 1913
- Colonial Coins & Medals, http://www.coinmedalshop.com.au/index.htm