Tiptaft badge + reinforcement numbers?

[geluveld]

‘Evening all

Today I bought a tiny lot of badges (tank badge in other topic)
- Rising Sun cap badge, marked slider and marked on back
- Rising Sun collar badge, with what looks like a Melbourne maker
- INF title, unmarked
- numerals 1 and 7, believed to form 17th Bin or reinforcement?
Of which one has normal lugs and one has the typical Ellis lugs

Quite happy with them, as I didn’t have the slidered badge yet, and numerals are a nice bonus ?

[geluveld]

Back of badges

[badgecollector]

very nice genuine set

[fromelles]

Originally Posted by geluveld

... numerals 1 and 7, believed to form 17th Bn or reinforcement?

Nice find!

The numerals and titles were introduced in August 1914 and used to identify the soldier's Unit (not reinforcement) prior to the introduction of colour patches (March 1916), though withdrawn from issue they can still be seen worn throughout the war.

They were worn on the epaulettes, so your example would be worn above an 'Australia' badge as follows -

17
INF
AUSTRALIA



Dan