Black and grey tattoo of Australia drawn as an old treasure map with scorched edges, a ship's wheel and the word Australia in script.

Australia map tattoo in old treasure map style

Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows an outline map of Australia with state labels NT, QLD, WA, SA, NSW and VIC, and the word Australia in cursive script across the centre. A ship's wheel, a small diamond and an X mark sit around the edges, and the coastline is finished with dark shaded, burnt-looking borders. The linework is fine and even, with grey shading on the outer edges and no colour ink.

Map Ship wheel Diamond Script

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lost property bag came up from A&E at ten past three, tied with green surgical tape and holding one shoe, a set of keys and a folded square of paper gone the colour of weak tea. Nobody on the ward wanted to be the one to open it, so I did, because the night sister had gone to sit with a man who kept asking for his mother.

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The map had been drawn in biro and pencil and then, judging by the edges, held over a hob until they curled and blackened. Australia sprawled across it in looping capitals with the states pencilled in like rooms in a house. Someone had put a ship's wheel in the top right corner, a small diamond near Queensland, and a cross on the south coast of Victoria, pressed so hard the pen had nearly gone through.

I know what a patient's treasure looks like at four in the morning. It is usually a photograph or a rosary. I sat under the desk lamp and wondered who would draw a country as a place to dig, and why the X sat in the south-east rather than somewhere sensible. Then I remembered the handover sheet: bed nine, Mr Okafor, thirty-one years a merchant seaman, asking every hour for his charts. He had gone up to cardiac at midnight, and his bag had been left behind.

I wrapped the paper in a clean towel and wrote his name on a sticky label. Then, because the ward was quiet and nobody would ever know, I drew a small wheel beside it and carried the bundle up three floors in my pocket, like something that might still be useful to a man who had spent his life finding his way back.