Australia's Many Flags

For 40,000 years this was a Dreaming Place.  Even though the Aboriginal custodianship of this place is ancient, the desert warrior who designed their Colours did so in 1971 and since that time, because of the enlightened way we modern Australians are attempting to deal with the consequences of the English Imperial invasion of 1788, to my knowledge no Indigenous warrior has had to fight and die for these colours.

This is important because there is an ancient (and very technical) difference between a banner and a flag.  To earn the higher status of "Flag" someone has to have died defending it, it has to have had blood spilled on it.  This is why the colour red is the single most widely used colour in all of the world's flags today. 

Today the Aboriginal Colours have the full protection of the Commonwealth Flags Act, and rightly so.

This is the version of the English flag that was raised at Sydney Cove in 1788. The raising of this flag apparently authorised, at least in English eyes

1.  The invasion of the Aboriginal Dreaming Lands and slaughter of the black population. 

2.  The establishment of a Slave State; a military prison colony in which the victims of an English population control program that targeted Trade Unionists and the poor were to be eliminated by a sequential process of shaming, exile, slavery, physical torture and abandonment.  

3.  It apparently also authorised the use of this place as a dumping ground for Political Prisoners and victims of English Imperial policies in Ireland and across the Empire.  

In 1854 we raised the first truly Australian flag at Ballarat in Victoria.  

This flag is named The Southern Cross.  In Ballarat in 1854 we called it the Australian Flag.

On the day that this flag was first raised we also swore the very fist Australian Oath of National Allegiance.  It began with the words "We sware by the Southern Cross

 By these two acts, the raising of our flag and the swearing of our Oath we gave birth to a new Nation. 

Under this flag we raised an army of two Divisions. ( Normally about 3,000 men each in Napoleonic times.) Under this flag we fought and died for a free Australia; a place where the descendants of the Convicts, the Evictees, and all who have subsequently joined us could live in freedom and human dignity. 

Our Slogan at that time was "Who so base to be a slave."

Since then we Native-born Australians, we Emancipists, we Diggers, we ordinary Australians embraced the Southern Cross as our national symbol and we have carried it forward in our hearts ever since; just as we carried the fight for freedom forward from the gold mines of Ballarat in 1854 to the coal mines of Newcastle in 1861.  

Today this flag has no legal recognition what so ever.  

This is the version of the English flag that the flew over this place during the subsequent democratic Colonial Period of our history from the 1860's to 1900.  

By then two fundamental changes had occurred.  

1. The Convict Rebellion that was begun by the Women's Rebellion on the First Fleet had sparked in Sydney in 1802 before catching fire at Castle Hill in 1804.  It then moved South to Van Daemon's Land where we saw huge convict armies of rebellion being raised before it turned back to the mainland again to ignite the Eureka Goldfields.

We came away from Eureka with a new sense of Australian national Identity and a vision of a land and a Nation united under the Southern Cross.  Now, the old Anti-slavery struggle and the new quest for National Unity were taken up by the fledgling Native Australian Nation under the solidarity of a Union Banner. 

The Rebellion continued.  From 1854 in Ballarat to 1861 in Newcastle and so on until by the 1880's and '90's it had reached Queensland, spread to Western Australia and then gone national to eventually force the reluctant Colonies to federate, very much against their will.

2. England's attitude toward this place had also changed.  As a result, this this version of the British flag represents the very best of England's gift to Australia, democratic parliaments, free elections, probably the best legal system in the world, world class hospitals and postal service; all this within an honest and more or less efficient public service structure.  

More than that, within the Best of British vision represented by this flag there was a fine sense of grandeur, of splendour and of worth that lifted this country up and sent its spirit souring during those optimistic day in the Democratic Colony. 

In 1901 the Commonwealth was declared and we raised our present flag.  

This flag has three parts, two quarters and a half within its the overall design.

 1.  The design shows the English flag, the Union Jack, in the dominant position. The top left hand corner on any flag is considered to be the dominant or superior position because it has been observed throughout history that the lower and right hand sides of a flag are often destroyed by fire and shot in the heat of battle.  Therefore the flag of the Commonwealth of Australia is designed so that the English flag will keep flying even after all of its Australian content has been blown away.  ( That seemed perfectly reasonable a century ago. ) 

2.  The Federation Star immediately below the Union Jack has a point for each of the Australian States and it is the symbol representing the unity of the six sovereign States plus Papua New Guinea that made up the Commonwealth at that time.  This star is displayed below the English Flag to symbolise the subservience of the Australian States to England.  Together, these two Imperial symbols occupy exactly half of the total flag surface.

3.  Occupying the whole of the other half of our present national flag, and therefore demonstrating our equal status with the English Empire in this place, is our Southern Cross, direct from Eureka.  Unlike the Federation Star, our Southern Cross stands proud, and is subservient to nothing save the throne of Almighty God.

This flag has been drenched in the blood of our Fathers and made glorious by the sacrifice and service of Australian Mothers.  

As we grow, and inevitably embrace the flag of the Republic it will be important that this present Commonwealth Flag be placed in safe stewardship.  Replace it we inevitably will, but the blood, sacrifice, accomplishment and glorious achievements it represents must never be dishonoured or discarded.