Australian Federation Flag
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The Australian Federation Flag, also known as the New South Wales Ensign, was the result of an 1830s attempt to create a flag to represent Australia as a nation.
The flag was proposed in 1831 in the NSW Calendar and Post Office Gazette by Captain John Nicholson, Sydney's Harbour Master, who also designed it. The flag was based on the Colonial Flag of 1823, which Captain Nicholson helped design. Like the Colonial Flag, the Federation Flag features a combination of the Union Flag and the Southern Cross, but the cross is blue, not red, and there are five stars, not four. The flag's appearance varied greatly depending on where it was made: different manufacturers produced Federation Flags with darker or lighter shades of blue for the cross background; using five-pointed stars instead of eight; or positioning the stars in different places. The flag looks similar to the Eureka Flag, which was designed in 1854 and was based on designs such as the Federation flag according to some historians.
The Federation Flag proved immensely popular, and was widely used on the East Coast of Australia for over 70 years. It was never officially adopted, but was flown unofficially by Federation-minded Australians and used as a makeshift ensign by the merchant marine. In 1884 Lord Derby of the Colonial Office banned the use of the Flag at sea, possibly because of its similarity to the British White Ensign.
In the 1880s and early 1890s it was used as a symbol of the political movement towards Federation, with groups like the Australian Natives Association and the Australian Federation League using it to promote national consciousness of their push for Federation, under the slogan "One People, One Destiny, One Flag".
The flag was a favourite of Australia's first Prime Minister, Sir Edmund Barton, who asked that a variant be considered for approval along with the competition-winning [1] Blue Ensign. The Colonial Office rejected the Federation Flag, issuing Barton a mild rebuke [2]. The Australian government received approval to fly the Blue Ensign in 1903, but the Australian Federation Flag was still being flown by Australian citizens as late as the 1920s.
[edit] External links
- New South Wales Ensign/Federation Flag Flags of the World discussion on the history of the Federation Flag
- A New Flag for Australia: Current Flag A New Flag for Australia brief history of the Blue Ensign and the Federation Flag.
- Our Federation Journey 1901-2001 Victorian Government Federation pamphlet (PDF)
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